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Dax The Infant |
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A baby discovers the dangers of haste. |
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Collect enough information before you act. |
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He remembered when they, his family, and he was not sure who composed his family at that time. But they lived on a farm in a frame house. It was a house composed entirely of wood. There was torn raggedy wallpaper on the walls. Where the wallpaper was torn, the wooden walls were visible. He remembered though, that there were pictures hanging here and there on the walls. There was no carpet or linoleum on the wooden floors. In the front room, the tall wooden door opened to a long wooden porch. They lived on a farm. He remembered this because he remember there were chicken, pigs, ducks, one cow, and other farm animals. What kind though he cannot remember. There were some chicken like things that were not quite chicken. Because, he remember they looked different from chicken and made a constant noise. He was sure though they were not turkeys. His mother would carry, him sitting on one of her hips with one of her arms around his back holding him tight against her side. He would grab onto her clothing and hold on tightly. She would walk into a vast area where there was nothing but weeds, grass and other vegetation. Whenever the cow was present, he was always uncomfortable. Sometimes his mother would have some white cubes of salt in her hands and she would walk over to the fence where the cow would be waiting for her. And she would reach her hand out and the cow would come over and lick the salt cubes out of her hands. The cow being so close to them always frightened Dax. He didn't like the cow being so close to him. He would watch my mother's face reading it for the state of the situation, and if she seemed comfortable with it then he would relax somewhat. Nevertheless, he still didn't like that cow. His mother would also place her hands on the cows face and make soothing sounds, like the sounds she sometimes made to him. He feared the cow would eat his mother's fingers. The cow seemed so huge, as if she could eat his mother and him also. He would never let his mother put him down in this place. He would scream and scream so loudly that his head would hurt when she tried it.
On the day this memory took place, it was very quiet. Hi sister Nona, who whenever no grown ups were around, she always stood between him and what ever he wanted. The wrinkled faced white-headed grownup, who sometimes replaced his cold wet diaper with a dry comfortable one, lay on the cot in this room where this memory started. This grown up slept, with loud sounds coming through his nose and mouth. The noises frightened Dax and he wanted to get away from it. But instead he crawled over to this person, his grandfather; he lifted himself up on his knees and stuck his fingers into his grandfather's nose. Quickly his grand father's head moved away from him, his grand father made a different loud noise and his eyes brows lifted and came closer together high upon his forehead, which had also become wrinkled. His nose lifted and widened. His hand rubbed his nose where Dax had touched it: Dax could see his grandfather's eyeballs moving beneath his eyelids, but his eyes did not open. Immediately the same noises started again. Frustrated Dax sat down and looked around again for Nona, but she was nowhere in sight. The noise from outside the tall open door caught his interest. He crawled over to the door then out onto the porch. The dog that would make loud sharp short noises and run to and fro until someone came and picked Dax up, was not there. He could not move too fast on this porch because as he crawled the hard wodden floor was uncomfortable to his knees. Dax crawled over to where his mother, when she was carrying him, would move down onto the green grassy yard. The yard looked too far away down the long steps, so he decided not to go down them. He sat down for a while, looking around at the animal moving about. The chickens were particularly interesting. He liked the way their neck moved every time they took a step. He was distracted by a noise from behind him that came from the room he had just left. He turned to see who was coming to bother him, but he saw no one. He was alone on the porch. Then right there beside him, on his left, he saw something especially interesting. It was a round circle with a point rising from it's center. It was composed of circles. The outer circle was yellowish; the next circle was black, there was a gray circle and the center was white. He wanted to eat this pretty candy looking circle. He reached down to pick it up, however, it was too soft and where his finger made contact with it the colors swirled together, and the substance was clinging to his fingers. Again he was distracted by a noise from inside the room where his grandfather was sleeping. It was his sister Nona. Even before she was all the way through the door, he recognized it was her. He looked at the substance clinging to his finger. He decided that he would not let her have it, as she often took candy away from him. So quickly, before she could get to him, he put his fingers into his mouth anticipating the sweet taste of candy. The instant his tongue touched the pretty substance which was clinging to his fingers, he realized it was not candy, far from it. It made him want to throw up. It tasted worst than the oily stuff his mother poured from a bottle and forced into his mouth. Caster oil. He tried to spit it out this sustance, but he had not quite mastered that skill yet. He tried wiping it from his mouth with his fingers, but that made it worse because so doing he only smeared more of the substance from his fingers into my mouth. Nona was to him now; she picked him up and seeing his distress and the substance on his mouth, she hurried for the doorway. She was yelling his his grandfather. Now, not only did he have this awful taste in his mouth and spasms in his stomach, her yelling frightened him. Nona's face conveyed to him that there was something wrong about him. He feared that he had damaged himself. He started to cry. He studied Nona's face, he tried to gather from it the seriousness of this. He looked at her asking her for help. He realized that he could not make the sounds that other people in the house made while their faces were toward each other. These sounds seemed to have special meaning to them. Some of the sounds had special meanings to him also. But he could not make these sounds yet. Usually when he looked at them they could understand what help he needed at the moment. He was not sure if it had worked this time. She just hurried him into where his grandfather was getting up from his nap. She handed him to his grandfather, who looked at him, first in discuss, then in amusement. His grand father made a sound to Nona and she disappeared into the kitchen retuning in a moment with a wet towel. She pushed this towel into his mouth moving it about and in a little time the awful taste in his mouth was better, but having the towel in his mouth made the spasms in his stomach worse and he threw up onto his grandfather. His grandfather eyes opened wide, and he abruptly lifted Dax off his lap, and held Dax away from him so the substance, which oozed from Dax's mouth, would fall onto the floor. However, no more came. His grandfather was studying his face for a few seconds, and Dax was studying his grand father's face. Each of them was trying to size up the situation. Finally, the look on his grandfather's face softened and his grandfather smiled. Nona's face had also returned to normal. The spasms in Dax's stomach had stopped. The awful taste of the chicken dropping was gone. Nona had a biscuit in her hand she ripped it into two pieces and gave one piece to Dax. Eating the biscuit was far more pleasing than the chicken poop he had just eaten. He remember that his mother was not around, He was not sure why. He did learn one thing that day. He learned to distinguish chicken poop from candy. He dosn't remember ever making that mistake again.
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