For readers tuning in late, this novella is about three adult travel companions who, after a life-threatening experience, transform into eight year-olds—and commence a surreal odyssey of discovery and healing.
Back at the Edgewater Hotel, Mularski assembled his portable easel, paint box and palette, which he’d already prepped with a variety of colors. Mularski liked to capture moment and mood by painting on site.
“Jeez,” I said, when he came through the connecting door into the room with two beds I was sharing with Nebraska. “Your backpack is almost as big as you.”
Mularski checked his wristwatch. “I think we have time for a drink.”
“Another dry martini?” I quipped.
“I figured out how to do this: Rum and Coke.”
We descended to the bar in time to see the sun set behind Puget Sound and pulled ourselves onto bar stools, surrounded by young dot-comers dressed in black.
“What’s your potion?” Mularski asked me.
“You know,” I said, “I’m already having fun—why do I need alcohol? I’ll have a Coke.”
Nebraska, in deep contemplation, also took a pass.
“Suit yourself. I think the way out of this is a stiff drink.” Mularski grimaced at the taste of rum, but pushed himself to take several gulps. “Yup, I feel better already.”
“Older?” I asked.
He ignored me, and chugged the rest, resisting an urge to retch when it was done. “Okay—to the art walk we go.”
A taxi dropped us at Pioneer Square as day turned to night.
“According to Frommer,” I said, “if there are any crazies, this is where they hang out.”
Nebraska, frightened of crazies, edged nearer to me, cupping my elbow into the palm of her hand the palm of her hand. “Stay close.”
After walking a block the scene turned vibrant with people and music. Mularski found his inspiration and set to work.
Nebraska and I wandered into a large art gallery and perused abstract works hanging on the walls. A few, in black and white, reminded me of Rorschach inkblots I’d seen as a child. prompting me to tell Nebraska, “The only time in my life I’ve been to a shrink was when I was eight years old.”
Nebraska stopped and looked at me wide-eyed. “What was the reason?”
“I was a very bad student at school. Never listened to a thing the teacher taught, daydreamed school away. So I got bad grades. The school complained to my parents— and made them take me to a couple of shrinks for a lot of tests, including inkblots.”
“You sure you were eight?”
“Pretty sure. It came to a head when I was in third grade.”
“How did it play out?”
“I think it was one session a week for three weeks. It seemed like it went on for a long time. An hour to an eight year old is like six hours to a 50 year-old. The worst part was waiting for a session to begin. Boring. Once we got going, I enjoyed the challenges, the games and puzzles—even the inkblots. Jeez,” I chuckled, “maybe that’s why I have an appreciation for art?”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“They decided I wasn’t an idiot. That I could do well if I wanted to, but I wasn’t trying.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much. I supposedly had a very high IQ and, in my mother’s words, would be able to do anything I wanted to do in life.’”
“A-D-D,” said Nebraska.
“Excuse me?”
“You had A-D-D. Attention Deficit Disorder. And maybe you still do. When did you do these tests?”
“I told you, when I was eight.”
“What year?”
I shrugged. “Early sixties.”
“That’s why it wasn’t diagnosed. It wasn’t until later in the 1960s that psychiatrists started labeling stuff like that.”
“You’re messing with my head,” I said.
“Nope,” said Nebraska defiantly. “School messed with your head. You probably didn’t learn much of anything at school—right?”
I considered this. “The teachers were so boring. I got Cs and Ds, so I guess you’re right.”
“But then you started learning in your late teens—and you’ve never stopped. Right?”
“You mean the kind of learning that is self-motivated and self-taught? Yep.”
“A-D-D,” said Nebraska.
“How do you know so much about A-D-D?”\
The answer hit me as Nebraska opened her mouth to say, “I got it, too. And since I’m much younger than you, I got diagnosed.”
“Tell me more,” I said.
“Most people are linear thinkers. Some are very smart. These are our doctors and dentists and lawyers and accountants. Our whole education system is built up around linear thinkers, and it caters to them. Creative people with A-D-D—that’s us—either suffer through school or take meds like Ritalin to make us focus. We think mostly with our right brains. We are the inventors and artists, and we are slightly mad. As kids, we are different, considered dumb, and we got picked on.”
I absorbed this. “You were bullied as a child?”
“It was easy for me to retreat,” said Nebraska. “I lived on a farm. My friends were all animals, my horse and my dog. We had a variety of animals and each had a name and became my dear friend. It became an issue come slaughter time.”
I looked into Nebraska’s eyes and uploaded the sadness from losing her friends, and I grasped the depth of her vegetarianism. “You really think I have A-D-D?”
Nebraska nodded. “Go online. There are simple tests you can take if you don’t believe me.”
“You think I should do something about it?”
“There are medications. Really cool ones. You ever do speed?”
I nodded. “A long time ago.”
“It wasn’t fashionable when I was a late teen because Ritalin, a similar kind of stimulant, had been invented and was easy to buy from kids who had prescriptions.”
“Do you have any?”
“No.” Nebraska paused, and winked. “I have something better.”
“Mushrooms?”
“No, that’s just for fun. Ritalin is old hat now. Better medications have arrived. Plus my meds are for A-D-H-D. Which is A-D-D with hyperactivity. I take something called Adderall. It is more like speed than Ritalin because it’s not just a psycho-stimulant, it also contains amphetamines.” Nebraska smiled, and I noticed a dimple I hadn’t seen before. “You know, psychiatry is all about pharmacology these days. Which makes psychiatrists drug-dealers for older folk.”
“Maybe I should take one and see how it effects me?”
“Sure. I carry them with me.” Nebraska dipped into her colorful woolen handbag and extracted a round pillbox with the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland emblazoned on it with the words “MEDS… or MADNESS.” From it she plucked an oval blue pill. “Open.”
I opened my mouth and, working up saliva, swallowed.
We continued our merry way through several art galleries around Occidental Square until live music in the street drew us down a darkened alley. Everything was so wondrous, a feast for the eyes.
We watched several young women dressed in formal evening gowns singing classic songs. Summertime, and the living is easy.
Moving along this enchanted night, we observed Mularski in the distance, standing before his easel, painting like a madman. I approached with stealth until I stood right behind him. He seemed oblivious, lost in the purity of his focus.
“Boo!” I hollered, inches from his ear.
Mularski jumped, startled and shaken. “Don’t do that!” he hollered. “I almost crashed into my easel!”
“For an eight year old, you paint pretty good,” I said.
Mularski relaxed. “Yeah, I had my grandmother to nurture my gift.”
“Ah, finally,” I said. “That’s the lesson from your grandparent.”
“Yup.” Mularski paused, arm outstretched to dab a dash of red onto his canvas. “Painting got me thinking about it. I used to escape the oppression of four older brothers by visiting my grandma. She put me to work on coloring books. That was the beginning. I first started to draw at her place. She taught me to express myself.”
“What else?”
“You said three, right?”
“Yep.”
“My grandmother was amazing when it came to wrapping presents. She would take a lot of time to wrap them. Their presentation was a work of art. From that I learned patience.”
“You wouldn’t know it,” quipped Nebraska.
And the third thing you learned?”
“Every birthday for her five grandsons she would bake a four-layer cake. She’d ask us what kind of cake and what color frosting. On my eighth birthday I wanted chocolate cake and blue frosting. And that’s what I got.”
“Lesson?”
“To make all occasions memorable.” Mularski added a last touch to his small painting before inspecting it with the flashlight he wore on his hat. “I’m done here.”
Nebraska and I waited while Mularski packed his gear.
“How to you feel?” she asked.
“Airy.”
She giggled. “Explain.”
“Light-headed. Like I’m walking on air.” I considered this further. “A calm empowerment.”
“Isn’t A-D-D cool?”
“If I had this in school I would-a aced everything!”
“Uh-oh,” said Mularski, overhearing. “What have you done?”
“He’s A-D-D,” said Nebraska. “I medicated him.”
“With what—mushrooms?”
“No. Another kind of psycho-stimulant.”
“No fair!” said Mularski. “I want one too.”
“Are you A-D-D?”
“Maybe. Are you a doctor?”
“Oh my God! I hope you’re not asking me to play Doctor with you.”
“I didn’t play with girls when I was eight,” said Mularski. “And now I remember why. Reminds me of a poem in a book by Morey Amsterdam I liked when I was a kid.”
“Who?”
“He was in the Dick Van Dyke Show. It goes, ‘When I was young I used to think that girls were sweet as pie. But when I think of what I thunk I think I thunk a lie.’”
“That’s supposed to be funny?” said Nebraska. “Now you definitely don’t get any medication.”
“I wanna play,” said Mularski.
“Go hide, we’ll seek,” said Nebraska. “And don’t be surprised if we don’t find you.”
I chuckled. “You’re good.”
“I’m growing into this,” Nebraska smirked.
“Don’t-cha see what’s happening here?” said Mularski to me. “She’s driving a wedge between us.”
“Paranoid, now?” asked Nebraska.
“Nah,” said Mularski. “Just eight.”