Above it All

One day at the park, a boy was swinging upside-down on a chin-up bar. The bar was intended, of course, for exercising rather than playing on, but being young the child could see no difference. Other children ran by him giggling and kicking a red ball. Seeing a dog sniffing around a tree, the boy lowered his eyes rather than watch it urinate. In doing so, what normally would have been down, naturally, became up. He saw the green foliage of the treetops dancing about in the wind. His downward glance continued, and the bright blue sky with its billowing white clouds filled his view.

In shapes of passing clouds he pictured dragons and wild circus animals. A horse, nostrils flared, mane tossed with hooves tramping, galloped across the horizon. Long and intently the boy watched. With blood rushing to his brain he became dizzy and imaged himself running along the same path. He was about to catch up to a string of elephants, when, lost in the daydream, his legs jumped an imagined ditch and loosened from the bar. Down and over he dropped violently to the ground. Hitting his head the boy lost consciousness.

Waking to find himself in a hospital, he immediately felt himself without a body, or at least the inability to move one if he had it. Flat on his back, he looked up at the kind but clinical faces of the Doctors and attending nurses. The medication he was given made him drowsy. In the swimming recesses of his mind he thought he heard the worried voices of his parents and another voice, a calmer one, quietly telling them about a damaged spinal column and the possibility of total paralysis.

Days later, he was rolled carefully outside in his bed to a courtyard for fresh air and sunshine. The nurse trying to cheer him asked, “Look up at the clouds, can you see anything in the shapes?”

“Yes”, he said quietly.

“Go on then, what do you see?” she urged.

Breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably he cried out, “My future!”

Dreaming the dreams of heavy sedation, the boy once more found himself jumping along from cloud to cloud, trying to catch other children who’d joined in his game. Without a care in the world he grinned at a large group of brightly painted clowns riding by, stacked up atop a tiny tricycle. The clown steering wore a large smile, but behind the paint had a mouth stern in its resolve. With his extra large gregarious shoes he peddled furiously towards an ominous dark cloud. His hand reached out to honk the bulbous red ball of his horn, but being top heavy with the weight of the other clowns, the vehicle suddenly threatened to overturn. Quickly grabbing both handles, the lead clown balanced first on the front and one back wheel, then teetered gracefully to the opposite, accompanied by the unison voices of all those above him saying, “Whoa…, ooh…aah!" They erupted into riotous cheers, whistling once their ride was safely righted after a lengthy pirouette on the front wheel alone. Furiously onward the clowns raced after the cloud, the horn now honking joyously, their tricycle with its red and white streamers gaily joining in on the chase.