I always thought life happened in flashes. You flash from one moment to the next, like excited children with sticky fingers at the country fair, zipping from booth to booth.
Flash. You’re five and you’ve got a tight grip. In one hand, your Spiderman, Cinderella, Ninja Turtle, Powerpuff lunchbox, and in the other, you’ve got your mother’s fingers. The world around you looks so big – big school, big kids, big bus. Except for the bees buzzing busily around the dandelions – they’re small, like you. That’s alliteration, but you still have a few flashes to go before you know that.
Flash. You are now nine years old and you have a penchant for catching fireflies on summer nights. The breeze bends the blades of grass and you stand tall over them, the triumphant ruler looming over his bowing subjects. The soft fade-ins and fade-outs of the fireflies’ fires are the torches in your grand throne room. The flames dance between your fingertips and you relish in your own power.
Flash. You’re fifteen. Everything is changing. There’s this girl and she blows you away. She’s crystal clear and everything else is blurry. Before this, you only kind of knew that you had a heart – you had heard about it in school that it pumps your blood and what not – but now you’re sure. You feel it race. You feel it fly. You feel it hurt, and you feel it break.
Flash. Now you’re twenty-one and you’ve started living for yourself again. You have more decisions to make than ever before. You can’t remember the last time you called someone just to talk. You can’t remember the last time you went outside just to be outside. Things are speeding up and slowing down at the same time. Somehow, days go by slowly, but weeks go by quickly. Until you get to a certain moment that changes everything.
No more flashes. Now, life starts happening in booms.
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