Hi there!  I’m trying to get better at casual posting on my sites.  I’m trying to relearn that passionate and casual can coincide.  Because I’m definitely not going to stop being passionate.  One of the top traits on my character sheet is that I care about things intensely, lol.  So I’m trying to figure out how to mix that with throwing flower petals along my way, letting things get the reactions they get.  If you’re passionate about everything, you can’t very well be perfectionist about all the things you’re passionate about.  To quote a favorite character of mine, “One might go mad.”

So here, with all the cazzz (there is no good way to spell the shortened version of “casual” in English!), is a prequel scene to my beloved flagship story, set when my protagonist is five, from his mother’s point of view.

My writing focus is always the characters, 100% (an EP writer’s first step), and one of my favorite things, since I was a lil tiny writer, has always been jumping to different points in a character’s life and seeing who they are at different check-in points in their lifetime character arc.  Over the years since Barry’s inception, I’ve done that with him more than any of my other characters, with three different main novel plot arcs set at three crucial points in his life—16, 22, and 40—and tons of flashbacks to all the times in between.

For anyone who may not have read my fiction before, this is a silly, seemingly mundane lead-in to the way I write, that is actually critically targeted at the themes of Barry’s story.  There is humorously no mention of the magical elements of the story in this scene at all.  But poignancy happens within the mundane moments of life.  Psyches are shaped in the quiet moments like these, where conversations happen, questions are asked, and childhood worldviews are developed into grown-up ones.

This scene, while on the surface just about a mom of two young boys having the kinds of crazy interactions that little boys have, shows a seemingly simple conversation that shaped who Barry Anderson is, and his relationship with his selfness.  It’s technically foreshadowing… but in a way, aren’t all our childhood experiences foreshadowing for who we become?  Children are such fascinating summations of their grown-up selves, even with all the choices in the world open before them to choose who they ultimately want to be.  It’s always my soapbox that people are both always their forever-selves, and who they chose to be with every ever-changing day.

Barry, in all the ¾-of-a-million words I’ve written of him, is always as portrayed here–passionate, dramatic, a little whiny sometimes, but deeply invested in the questions of the Universe and what defines self, and gender, and what makes people matter.  He grows with every one of the hundreds of thousands of words I put him through (often kicking and screaming), but it’s in the quiet and the silly that the images of the world take shape for him.  This is the seeds of Barry’s relationship with Barry, starting from being very smol.

So, without further adieu, or somethin’, please enjoy five-year-old Barry Anderson… and three-year-old Nick Anderson 😱 !

“Barwee, get owaa way!! Got’e pee pee!!” Dania heard her three-year-old shout at his older brother from her bathroom, with the door open, as she stood in the kitchen.

“If it’s just pee pee, we can go at the same time!” five-and-a-half-year-old Barry declared excitedly.  “Like at my school, we use the urinals right beside the big kids!”

“Quiet, stupidhead!  I got’e potty!” Nick bellowed back.

“I’m not stupid!  I gotta pee too!” Barry’s little voice was growing offended.

Dania was wrist-deep in bread dough and couldn’t immediately run over.  “Barry!” she called, exasperated.  “Let Nick use the potty!!  There are literally three other toilets in the house!”

“But we could both–” Barry started protesting.  His sentence was cut off by his shrill little boy scream.  “NICK!!!” he shrieked.  “Mommy he peed on me!!  On PURPOSE!!!”

In case this motive for Nick’s action was in question, Dania heard a maniacal little toddler laugh echo from her bathroom.

Dania released a growling petition towards the sky, dropping the bread dough frustratedly on the counter and going with floury hands to see the destruction her small creatures were havocking.  “Boys!!” she scolded before she reached the doorway.

They both turned and looked at her.

Her kindergartener’s face was a mottled hot pink with indignant fury and tears, and Dania was eternally impressed with how much smugness a face as young as Nick’s could contain.

Barry’s pale little leg beneath his shorts had a trickle down it, with Nick’s pants still down and his little boy gun still turned toward his target.  There was a wet spot on Dania’s light blue fluffy bath mat.

They have their own bathroom to make gross! she thought grumpily.  Why do they have to come boy on mine??

But she just sighed.

“Mommmy!” Barry moaned, always the whinier of the two.  “I told him we could both go, but he peed right on me!”

“Barry, he’s three!  He can’t hold it yet, like you can,” Dania shook her head.  “You should have just let him go potty and gone upstairs or in the entryway!”

“But Mommy!” Barry pouted at the apparent injustice.

“And Nick…” she went on, not believing she had to form the next sentence, “we only go pee pee in the potty!  Not on the floor and certainly not on other people!  Peeing on other people is mean!!”

Life as a mom out-of-context sometimes…

“Barwee stupidhead!  In mu way!” Nick grumped bitterly.

“I’m not a stupidhead!  You are!” Barry retaliated.  “You can’t even go pee in the potty, you baby!”

“No sir!” Dania pointed an angry finger at her older boy.  “You are the big boy, you are not going to be mean to your brother just because he’s little!”

Barry shut his big lips guiltily, eyes welling up.

Dania sighed again, rubbing her forehead tiredly with flour smear.  “Help me clean up the mess and then we’ll talk about it, okay?  You’re both getting time-out.”

Barry sniffled.  “Mommy?”

“Yes, Barry?” she asked, washing her hands before she immediately got them dirty again, definitely smelling the urine in the bathroom air.

“I still gotta pee.”

“Oh!” she realized.  “You go ahead and go in here, honey, and I’ll take Nick to the mud room and change his clothes.”

 

Once the rug, floor, clothes and legs were cleaned up, both of the boys were put in their time-out spots.  Dania used the “time out length is double your age” rule and went and retrieved Nick after 6 minutes; he was amusing himself by making fart noises.  They had a very brief talk about “not lashing out just because we get mad” and “keeping pee pee in the potty.”  He was such a deranged little boy sometimes.

Nick got off with a muttered “sowee” and she’d make him hug Barry after the older boy’s time out was over.

The 10 minute timer went off and Dania went quietly into Barry’s room.  He was sitting in his little chair glowering out the window.

“Your time is up,” she said gently, since he hadn’t moved.

“I heard,” he muttered, chin on his arms.

His melancholy was a tad humorous.  “Baz, you were in his way.”

“I wanna kick him in the penis,” Barry declared vindictively under his breath.

“Barry!” Dania scolded, trying not to laugh at how unexpected and intense that was.  “That’s not nice at all!  Think about how yours feels and how much that would hurt!”

Barry got very quiet, like maybe he hadn’t fully thought of that yet and it was meaner than he’d intended.  Goodness, this one liked his hyperbole.

She sat on the bed behind him.  “Why are you really upset, Bazlet?  Because I don’t think it’s just because Nick peed on your leg.”

He looked sideways at her over his bony shoulder.  “It was embarrassing.”

She clucked softly, surprised.  “Embarrassing, sweetheart?”

He turned to face her fully, rubbing his little wide nose like it was itchy from trying not to cry.

“You didn’t wet your pants, love,” she reminded him.

“I know!” he replied offendedly.  “Still though…”

She just waited.

“I was trying to tell him about school,” he finally mumbled tragically.

“Oh,” Dania realized, touched.  “You were trying to share something special with your brother and he peed on you?”

There was a long pause then the barest of nods, big lip sticking out tragically.

“What’s special to you about how they pee at school, honey?” Dania smiled affectionately at her passionate little boy, trying again not to laugh.

“It’s how the big boys do it!  Standing together at the urinals!” Barry declared.

“And you want to be a big boy too?” she asked.

He gave her a nod with huge, longing blue eyes.

“But you are getting to be a very big boy, Barry,” she told him seriously.

He sniffed again.  “I called it a ‘pee-pee’ one time and the big kids made fun of me.”

Her brow furrowed.  “Oh no, honey!  I didn’t know that.  I’m sorry!”

His mouth screwed up.  “I don’t wanna use baby words.  But they call it other things and get in trouble.”

Oh dear, to her kindergartener?  Already?!  Dania was starting to wonder if she should regret sending her boy to public school.

“They do?” she worried.

He nodded gravely.  “They say”–he dropped to a whisper–“‘dick.’”

Dania was upset but resigned at this point.  “Yeah, that’s a not-nice word, honey.”

Barry nodded adamantly to show he was a big kid and already knew that.  “But ‘penis’ is an okay word?”

Dania was also starting to regret not letting Frank take this conversation.  “Well, that’s the doctor-word for it, baby.  It’s the science word.  But we don’t want to talk about private parts too much in general, okay?”

Her thoughtful boy was very thoughtful.  “There are always drawings in the bathroom, every time you go poop…”

“Drawings?”

He nodded again, and then held his two small fists side-by-side, and then mimed a shaft on top of them with a vertical hand.

Dania thought it was an impressively imitative visual.  “Oh.  Yeah, sometimes boys draw pictures of boy parts on things, but that’s not nice either,” she explained.

Barry grew very quiet once again.  After a long moment he asked.  “Is it stupid?”

“Is what stupid, sweetheart?”

He silently put his small hand over his crotch.

Her heart went out to her little boy.  “You’re asking if having a penis is stupid?”

He nodded very slowly.

“Oh, no no no, sweetheart!” she shook her head intently.

“They kinda make it seem stupid,” he noted.

“Some of the boys who have boy parts are stupid,” she explained, “but that doesn’t make boy parts themselves stupid!  And it’s part of what makes you you!”

“It is?” he asked hopefully.

She nodded adamantly, pointing to where he’d laid his hand on his shorts.  “That’s a very special part of Barry’s body and I want you to treat it like it’s special, okay?”

Barry was looking down between his pale little legs pensively at the spot under his shorts’ fly.

“Okay?” his mother nudged.

Barry met her eyes with grave bright blue ones.  “Yes, Mommy.”

She pushed off her legs to help her stand up off the bed.  “Now, c’mon!  Nick has been silent this entire conversation.  I am terrified what he’s getting into!”

Much love!
<3 Calise