Some Things Never Change

My eyelids began to get heavy and I struggled to see as the light from the candle began to dim. Thoughts of turning in for the night crossed through my mind, but I quickly shook my head as if to chase them away. I was nearing the end of the book and was determined to complete it that night.

I began toying with the sheet of stickers I had been using as a bookmark and my mind wandered off. I absentmindedly turned the pages, not really reading the pages, as my thoughts turned to my uncle. Back when I was a youngster, he would tease me often for abandoning my studies in favor of the daydreams I loved. I would sit on the back porch, licking a spatula clean of any batter from some confection my aunt was always making, as I wondered at the sky until my mother came to get me for a bath.

She would try her hardest to scrub me clean with a checkered washcloth while I splashed about, pretending my cow puppet was hunting seals in the great blue, bubbly sea of the tub. After she finally managed to get me clean, my mother would pull me out of the bath and wrap a towel around me, telling me I should drink more water as she put Chap Stick on my dry and cracked lips.

Every night, as my father put me to bed, I would tell him I was hungry in hopes of getting one of the cereal bars I loved so much, but to no avail. He always brought me chips, thinking I would grow tired of chewing and fall asleep. But it never happened, instead, I would pretend the bag clip was a monster, trying to eat my father’s nose. He would play along for a while, but soon his long day would catch up with him and he would tell me to go to sleep as he took the bag of chips back downstairs.

I’m not sure how long I sat there like that with a wandering mind, but I thought it was strange that I had been thinking of people that no longer lived on this earth. “I guess things change.” I thought to myself, but I began laughing when I saw a cereal bar on the table next to my chair, “And some things don’t.”