So, I’m preparing lunch in the kitchen and from out of nowhere, I hear Indy calling out from behind the couch on his playmat, pointing to a picture of a mother duck and her ducklings and going, “Gwark, gwark, gwark,” (his equivalent of ‘quack, quack, quack’). I’m totally gobsmacked. Repeatedly, over and over again, “Gwark, gwark, gwark…gwark, gwark, gwark.” So, I fire back at him, “Gwark, gwark, gwark”, and he echoes back at me, “Gwark, gwark, gwark”.
Our first official conversation, even if it was in Gwark. That is until…I pick up the video camera to film it. Then it’s like it never happened. Like Robert DeNiro in the end of Awakenings, he slips back into his non-communicative state. The same glazed over look you see when someone describes the concept of Celebrity Splash or when journalists ask Tony Abbott anything about politics. Why is it only me that sees these things?
It’s like Sesame Street when I was a kid and Big Bird had an imaginary friend that nobody else could see, his shaggy elephant buddy, Mr Snuffleupagus. The thing about ‘Snuffy’ was that he actually was real but was always gone before anyone else could see him. And that’s how I feel. I’m Big Bird and whenever I try to show someone something cool that Indy does, he pulls a ‘Snuffy’, and I’m left hangin’ like I’m making it all up.
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THEN YOU SAID…