The Boy Who Grew Up

Marty Sale found himself daydreaming in the middle of a haircut…

He was retired, by then, not from cutting hair, but from his optometrist office, the one he’d had in the city. He wasn’t there, now, in the city, or even in the suburbs, but in the very outskirts, way back in small town life, what he thought he’d escaped long ago. But this was the Midwest. No one ever escaped. You just kind of forgot it for a while.

Marty never forgot the boy. That would’ve been impossible. His folks brought him out to the city all in a panic. The boy had just started school and the teacher was already complaining, saying he was a constant disruption…Not because he was unruly (he surely was nothing like the president’s…son, who certainly didn’t attend a public school, but who, like his father, was…inescapable; Marty’s firsthand experience was because they condescended to using his office, too), which was obvious enough, just from how patiently he sat in the waiting room, how he didn’t even fidget in the chair, how when they brought him back with his new glasses he actually apologized…

No, the boy hadn’t needed glasses, and truth was…Marty never did figure out what was wrong, and in truth stopped worrying about it before too long, but he also couldn’t help but notice…the boy never stopped wearing the glasses. Marty never asked. Would never even had crossed his mind…

He watched the boy grow. When he showed up in the city, as a man, Marty found his name in the bylines of newspaper articles. Otherwise he never saw him. No one did, probably. There was plenty to keep everyone busy, though. 

Marty’s specialty had always been eyes. He never forgot them. He wondered…

What else had that boy experienced? He imagined that even then, the boy could fly. When had it all emerged? Probably he’d always had those gifts. His parents had never let him feel less than…loved. Rare enough. Certainly the president’s son…Too many others. What Marty saw was exactly what he’d always seen in the boy. Being…decent. 

He’d simply grown up. Maybe even as a boy…Some of us, Marty thought, are born grown. That boy was surely one of them. It just took a while for everyone else to notice. Or, maybe, stop noticing. Just started taking him for granted, even with…That paper he wrote for, sometimes about his own…It was just about selling copies. Almost turned into a tabloid, with all those pictures…The editorials, bought by the former president, penned by that son of his…It didn’t matter. Truth and justice, however elusive, and whatever the American way was supposed to be, now…

Marty shivered. The barber asked if he was okay. Marty didn’t know how to reply.

And at that moment, the boy who’d grown up, flew past.