Alistair’s Road
by Greta Morgenstern
Alistair lived in a quiet town, a bit too quiet. It was not exciting at all. His life was not interesting, and certainly not colorful. All the houses were the same color and lined up along the road. People only came out of their houses to water their plants or walk their dogs. And they always went back in before you could say “hello.” It seemed that the town had only three colors, the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, and the beige of everything else. But that was not how Alistair saw it.
Every day he walked to school on the same road, but never saw or heard the same things. Instead of the two basset hounds dozing lazily in the neighbor’s front yard, he saw two boys throwing and catching a baseball. Instead of the iron gate that opened up to the park, Alistair saw little girls in colorful sundresses showing off their dolls. Leaves turned into butterflies. Dull, old buildings were all the colors of the rainbow and full of life. The sky’s clouds took every shape -- a castle, a puppy, the alphabet. He saw flowers where there were none, colors where things were dull, and beautiful things taking the place of boring ones. He saw a parade going up the empty street, and Alistair marched through the dandelion puffs floating throughout the air.
Alistair ran to his older brother, who was walking way ahead, and tried to tell him about a heart-shaped cloud. His brother just laughed and called him a baby. The younger kids at school were the only ones who listened to him. Eventually, not even they cared that much.
Alistair got older. One day in fifth grade he was walking with many friends, and they saw three girls playing in the playground. They were skipping around and climbing on the equipment and giggling, “Mia, it’s your turn to be the princess!” and “Aaaah! Here comes the dragon!”
“Dude, that is so lame!” grunted one of the bigger boys. Instead of standing up to the boy who had insulted the girls, Alistair laughed in a rude way with the others. This happened again and again, Alistair was always laughing and pointing, and he now believed that beauty and pretending was only for babies.
One afternoon, in the middle school courtyard, Alistair could have sworn he saw a colorful butterfly, floating around. But when he put out his hand to catch it, he realized it was just a leaf.
As Alistair got into high school he got interested in girls, was always playing sports, and when he wasn’t playing sports, he was doing his homework so that he could. He saw the world as it was, and didn’t ever daydream.
Time passed. Alistair grew up, got a job, got married. Soon, he had a little boy of his own.
On Toby’s first day of kindergarten, Alistair was walking him to school, and Toby was skipping happily. All of a sudden, he pointed at the water fountain on his right.
“Look, Daddy!” he squealed. “It’s a chocolate fountain!”
Alistair looked. He saw an ordinary fountain.
“That’s nice,” he said absent-mindedly.
Toby leaped around, tapping his feet.
“Did you see that cloud?! It was a heart!”
Alistair could have sworn he had heard somebody say that before.
A leaf fell off of an old tree.
“Daddy, look at that butterfly!”
“It’s just a – a butterfly?”
The leaf had turned into a butterfly before his very eyes. Alistair looked around. The ordinary fountain had turned to a chocolate one, flowers bloomed on the spot, and a colorful rain came down from the heart cloud. Alistair put out his hand and a pink bean landed in it.
“Hey, Toby, it’s raining jelly beans!”
Jelly beans started raining down from all the clouds. Toby put out his hands.
“I catched a green one!” he giggled.
“Oh, yeah? I caught a pink one!”
Red swedish fish swam slowly and calmly in a pool full of soda that changed colors. The trees swayed in the breeze, and the coconuts hanging off of them began to sing silly songs. Kittens and puppies popped their heads out from behind bushes of cotton candy and ran to greet the two laughing boys out on the road.