Dumb story. Boo, I say. Booooooooooooooooooo.

I love thinking and thinking about thinking and thinking why I think about thinking and thinking why I love thinking about thinking but sometimes I don't think as much as I do especially when I'm walking really fast because I have to look at where I'm stepping otherwise I'll trip or fumble and one time while I was walking fast and thinking at the same time I stepped on a little crevice and toppled over and hit my head on the corner of a bench and suddenly I woke up in the hospital with blood all over my face and the doctor said the x-ray shows I broke the bone around my left eye and left cheek so that the left side of my face looked caved in and the beautiful doctor said she had to put metal plates on my skull to join the bits of bone together and oh it was all so complicated she had to cut through my eyelid and my gumline and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of my bones and she said it was for free because she works for the government and she was talking and talking and talking very much but I didn't understand everything else she said because she was such a curious creature to look at always prattling and making noise and her face was animated eyes widening and narrowing cheeks hiking up and down her face flashing and hiding her teeth then suddenly I blurted "you're beautiful" and she just stopped talking to me and my daddy and I didn't want her to stop talking because just then she looked like a photograph and I wanted her to look like a movie then she laughed and said "why Lee, you have such a sweet son--" "I'm not sweet" I interrupted her "you can't taste me" but maybe she tried licking me when I was lying asleep on the surgical table and no one was looking but why oh why would she taste me whereas my mother says I smell sour most of the time and then my dad added "what she means is you're nice, Patrick, you're nice is all"--

Where's the soap?

A white bar of Safeguard is always here on the soap dish right below the shower nozzle and once it becomes a small size I dry it out in the sun and collect it in a jar of other small dried soaps and I leave the jar at my bedside so I can sniff the contents right before I sleep and the smell is just so clean and comforting but right now the soap is missing and I have shampoo inching down my forehead and I have to soap really fast so I can wash myself right away because if the shampoo reaches my eyes they will get red and itchy and painful and I won't be able to go to the special school I go to which is just five houses away from where I live so I yell out the bathroom window "mom where's the soap" but I don't hear any reply but that's just how my mom is she doesn't talk very much and she gets irritated easily and right before I knew it I hear footsteps stomping up the stairs and a loud banging on the door like she was accidentally nailed alive inside a coffin and then my mother yells "open the goddamn door and let me find the soap where I can see it" so I scamper opening the door and my mother walks in with her eyebrows knotted at the center and she smells of garlic rice and Tender Juicy hotdog and she says with one arm stretched "there's your bloody soap you stupid nitwit! And cover yourself for chrissakes" and I forget I'm naked but what really matters is the soap so I go "where is it I don't see it" and then she pushes the hair out her eyes and steps into the shower cubicle and picks up something from the floor only then I realize there's the soap and I wonder how it got there when this has never happened before but maybe there was an earthquake while I was still sleeping and the soap must have slipped from the soap dish and landed on the floor and yes yes yes there's a dent on one corner of the soap and really there must have been an earthquake and right before my mother steps out the bathroom I ask "was there an earthquake this morning" and she goes "just what the hell are you talking about?" and after she slams the door her voice echoes from hallway saying "there hasn't been any bloody earthquake in years!" and now I'm stumped about the mystery of the dented soap but I get over it because I have to soap myself really fast so I can wash myself and not get a red eye and be able to go to school where I can play chess with the new kid named Sheila who I met two days ago and she's really good at chess but she can never defeat me because I'm the best chess player in my special school where the other special kids are so certainly we're the cream of the crop and I'm the best chess player of the cream of the crop so most probably I'm the best in the whole town that's because I spend most of my time playing with a chess software which my father installed in my computer because no one else can defeat me except the intelligent chess software and now Sheila's come and she's not that bad and I like playing with her because I've never played with a human for about a year now but yesterday she didn't like playing with me because I scratched my butt while we were playing because my butt was so itchy and I smelled my fingers to see if my butt smelled bad or not but really I like smelling things specially the smell of pigsties and poultry because they're just so concrete in my mind and the only way I can picture my own butt is to smell my fingers which I scratched it with and Sheila said "what are you doing" and I said I was smelling my fingers and she said "gross" and then I continued thinking about the grand attack that would end our game because she was losing because she moved her center pawns carelessly but then she drummed her fingers on the table and suddenly my whole complicated grand attack vanished from my head but I forgave her and thought about my complicated grand attack again until she was drumming her fingers again along with the tapping of her foot and she kept on looking at her watch and my complicated grand scheme suddenly flew out my head again and never came back so I said "will you stop it" "stop what" she said and I forgot what we were talking about and she just kept repeating "gross" all the time but I thought smelling my fingers was just as natural as eating and sleeping and taking a bath and then she said we'll just play tomorrow because she has to go with her mom to the dentist but I thought she wasn't really going to the dent--

A curious voice laughed outside like a hysterical hearty laugh that came from the stomach and I tiptoe and peak out the window only I can see because I'm six feet flat unlike my mom who is five feet flat and there's our next door neighbor Mr. Zinggapan who looks real tiny from up here despite being as tall as I am and there he is chatting with my mother like they always do in the morning which I like because my mother rather looks different when she's talking to Mr. Zinggapan because it's the only time I see her calm and happy unlike being angry and cranky all the time and I wave my hand from the window yelling "good morning Mr. Zinggapan" and his face shoots up and he says "oh hi Patrick come on down here and give me a hug" like how he always says it but I've never heard him laugh real hard until now which is just so curious because his laugh doesn't sound like him at all and I know Mr. Zinggapan pretty well and I know he loves watching war movies and drinking red tea every five o'clock in the afternoon and he also plays airsoft where he pretends to be a soldier killing other fake soldiers in the fake battlefield of a forest far away from here and he loves wearing camouflage clothing and he always hides behind a bush and surprises me when I'm walking on the way home at three-ten in the afternoon and we share the same passion for reading National Geographic magazines which he's collected stacks upon stacks of it all crammed into a giant bookshelf and he gives me puzzles and toys every Christmas the latest one he gave me was a Sudoku Rubik's cube on my birthday and it has numbers one to nine on the sides and that you can't repeat the number on each side and it was nice because it kept me busy for a whole Sunday but after I learned how to fiddle with it I just lost interest and moved on to playing chess again but it was nice he gave me the Sudoku cube because he makes me feel the special person that I really am and then he tells me all about Greek gods and goddesses but I just listen to him because I don't believe in Greek gods and goddesses although he's said they're just myths ancient people made up to explain things they can't explain like thunder and lightning and rain and floods and death and stuff like that and I don't know why people believe in such things like my mother she forces me to go to church every Sunday at seven in the morning even if I already told her I don't understand this concept of God even if I try really really hard because the first time I did that I cried because I really can't force myself to believe it because I can't really understand the logic behind it but I don't tell my mother that because I don't want to break her heart so I pretend I now understand this God person and I go to church every Sunday to accompany my mother and after that she takes me to Jollibee which I like very much because I think I'm addicted to burger steak which neither my mom nor dad can cook the exact same way as Jollibee does but sometimes I also eat burger steak with tuna pie or chocolate sun--

This pair of socks is not a pair at all!

My mother always prepares my clothes on my bed after I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and sometimes my socks have the same color but different in material which I can't wear to school because I'm not comfortable wearing unpaired socks with different textures but I can wear socks in different colors but the texture and material and thickness and length should be the same otherwise I'll think about my pair of unpaired socks all throughout the day and I won't be able to talk to Teacher Mitch and Sheila and my other special classmates and Mr. Zinggapan and I won't be able to concentrate on playing chess and I get sweaty and jittery all over until I come home and remove my socks and just collapse in my bed without eating dinner and then I'll eat too much for breakfast the following day and vomit on my way to--

No more pair of matching socks in my socks drawer!

Maybe I can go to my parents' room and get a nice pair of comfortable socks from my dad's socks drawer and I love my dad's socks he wears slippers all the time because his feet sweat inside socks and stink so bad and he wears his socks and shoes only on special occasions like birthdays and Christmases and weddings and baptisms and fiestas that's why I like his socks very much because they're practically new and tight unlike mine which are loose and rather look like bacon strips around the garters but they don't bother me if they're loose as long as they're the same pair or at least the same texture and thickness and length and I like things like that because the doctor thinks I'm also sensitive to things that touch my skin which is true because I hate rough surfaces and I like smooth or soft ones like the surface of glass and marbles and spoons and the surface of my Mirror Rubik's Cube which Mr. Zinggapan gave me last Christmas but the surface I like the most is the surface of water because it's nice and flat to look at especially when I have to keep myself from touching it because my hands will get wet and I'd just wish I was a bug like the water strider which can walk and skate off the water surface while carrying things fifteen times heavier than its body weight without sinking and drowning in the water but what I really think is that water is simply magical because it can turn into three states of matter and it makes up 70.8% of our planet and 55% to 78% of the human body depending on the height and gender and it has so many uses especially my favorite which is taking a bath and it also baffles me when I put a pencil inside a glass of water because the pencil is bended into an optical illusion which is just mind boggling because I haven't studied that in school yet but what I really want to see with my own eyes is a little piece of diamond cut and polished and shiny like those things movie stars wear but I don't like the glamor part because I want to keep the diamond my own little secret because I can't tell anybody else why I like it because I can't talk straight when discussing about its face centered cubic crystal molecular structure and the covalent bonding of its atoms which makes it the hardest material on the planet and its optical dispersion when light hits the diamond surface like how it does when it hits a prism except that the color spectrum in a diamond is multidimensional and there's this diamond the size of the sun fifty light years away out there in the constellation Centaurus except that I'd need the Hubble telescope just to see that and it's funny how it became like that because it's actually just a crystallized white dwarf which used to be a star like the sun until it exploded on its last atom of fuel and collapsed in itself to form like that and five billion years from now the sun will explode just like that and turn into a cosmic diamond but I don't know if either the sun's diamond or the sun's fuel has more financial worth but I do know a diamond is just a useless dead gem that used to be a gas ball that can power millions of home planets like ours because the sun nourishes every single living thing on earth and I'd rather worship the sun than worship my mother's God because I can see and feel the sun and it has scientific evidence of its existence but I don't tell people any of these things because they stare right into my eyes and I get distracted and then my thoughts would just pop out of existence like bubbles and they will think I'm a stupid nitwit like how my mother calls me all the time but it's alright because I love my mother even if she treats me like a pet cockroach like the ones I kept in a shoebox underneath my bed last summer because she loves and hates me at the same time and I love her because she takes care of me all the time and she's worried all the time so even if she treats me like a nitwit it's alright because I love her just the way she is especially how she cleans everything in the house because messy things keep me locked up in the room because I don't like the sight--

"I told him that a bazillion times, Lee. He just wouldn't go away."

That's my mother's voice and I think she's arguing again with--

"What if we just pay him? I can give him fifty thousand pesos just to stop seeing Patrick, how's that?"

Who's seeing me why does he see me how long has he been seeing me do I know him is he spying on me does he want to kill--

"No, no, no. I just can't do that, Lee. Berting wouldn't accept that. All he wants is to be with Patrick, or at least see him everyday."

But Mr. Berting Zinggapan has been our neighbor ever since I can remember and he sees me because he likes me and he thinks I'm special and he has never spied on me and I don't think he'll ever kill me any time soon but why does daddy--

"But this has got to stop, Dolor. It hurts to even think you're talking to him again. I thought this issue was done and over with? It's okay he can talk to Patrick but not you, Dolor, not you again."

My daddy doesn't see them talking every morning because he always wakes up late but Mr. Zinggapan hasn't done anything wrong to my mommy or me except for the first time he surprised me from behind a bush--

"But we were just talking. He can stay--"

I don't know what they talk about but mommy never look threatened or suspicious or anything and they rather look like real friends for a real long time until they stopped for--

"The point is, this is just too much, Dolor. I want him to stay away from you and Patrick."

But Mr. Zinggapan is a good man and the only threat I can think of he's done to me when he leaps at me from behind a bush outside but I don't think that's wrong although my heart sank a little but after that he made me laugh and it felt good and every time he surprises me my heart doesn't sink any more even if his surprises aren't surprising any more because I just like him doing that over and over and over and over and I laugh just as much as the first time he surprised me but maybe he's just being nice so I could trust him and then he'll kidnap me and take me away because he doesn't have a family of his own and I don't want that to happen because I don't want to leave my mom and dad and I want to stay here where everybody I know is because new places make me uncomfortable and I almost forgot that Mr. Zinggapan is waiting for me outside so I can give him a hug but why oh why oh why don't I understand any of this I wish he'll just go away for a moment so I can go to school because I'm one minute and forty-two seconds late because of the mismatched socks but I have no other choice but to wear them because I don't want to interrupt my parents in their room and I don't want them to know that I know what they know but I don't know what to do because I like Mr. Zinggapan but I don't want to hurt his feelings but my parents are more important to me than Mr. Zinggapan even if Mr. Zinggapan is nicer to me than everybody else so I'll just avoid Mr. Zinggapan so my parents will stop arguing over it and there will be less noise in the house and everything will be back to normal except that I won't have any more presents for Christmas which makes me sad but I don't like sad things because they depress me so I'll just think of happy things like this pair of shoes my daddy bought me last year at Baclaran but my socks inside are not the same and I feel like my left foot is bigger than my right foot and my left toes are rubbing against the insides of my shoes making my toenails hurt but I have to go now so I yell to no one in particular "I'm going to school" but my parents don't hear me or nobody in particular hears me because I didn't say that to anybody in particular in the first place so I shouldn't be worrying about my parents talking back but sometimes they hear me sometimes they don't it doesn't matter it's all part of the routine of the everyday happening over and over and over and over in an endless repetition but today is going to be different because my socks are mismatched and I walk like I have poliomyelitis but I have to run now fumbling as I run and there's Mr. Zinggapan and I force myself not to see him and hear him but I can't because the peripheral vision of the human's iris is the most sensitive part of the eye so I see him even if I pretend that I don't and I hear him because I can't put my palms on my ears because that would look like I deliberately don't want to hear him but I pass him by and his voice echoes in my head saying "what's the matter Patrick? Give me a hug! Wait, are you crying?" but I'm not exactly sure that's what he said I wasn't listening very well because I'm thinking of something else and I have to focus on where I'm stepping at because I might trip again and hit my face because of the socks but birds up overhead just wouldn't shut up and they're circling around and around with their heads looking down at me while shrieking "Haaaaaaaaak! Haaaaaaaaak! Haaaaaaaaak!" which sounded like the bird language for hug and there's Manang Piring the grandmother with no teeth and she's all gums and her wrinkly lips are sucked in but now she's smiling at me saying "Hiiiiiiiii!" which I thought would end with a G to sound like haaaayyyg but I look back at the ground stepping left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right the plodding of my shoes sounds like the Chinese gonging of a clock which calms me down because I don't have to look at everything around me and be distracted on my staggering but here comes that taho vendor following me on his rusty bicycle and pointing at me and saying "Mongoloid! I want to hug a mongoloid today!" but I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid "Mongoloid!" "stop it" I yell at him but "Mongoloid! Mongoloid! Mongoloid!" "stoooooooooop" "Huggoloid!"

I stop on my tracks and glare at him and he stops his bike four and a half feet away from me smiling his upper teeth missing and his hair is dyed brown and his tattered shirt says Vote Senator Whatsisname "Huggoloid!" I run after him and he just pedals and pedals like those circus monkeys on Discovery Channel while he's screaming "Huggoloid! Huggoloid! Huggoloid!" now I ought to be mad and I ought to be running after him and I ought to punch him in the face and I ought to hurt him really bad because he is a bad person but the wind on my face is sweeping up my cheeks and into my mouth and through my hair and passing through my armpits and my arms and my eyes dry out and tears spill sideways to my temple out of happin--

...

I open my eyes. There's a bright white light.

"He's awake! He's awake!" Who's that?

I call my mom and dad. Nothing comes out my mouth.

"It's alright, honey. You were hit by a motorcycle." What motorcycle?

I reach for the person talking. I raise my hand and it's green. My hand and arm are green. Both my hands and arms are green. All my body is green. My body is green and I am a plant. I am a plant on a bed with a bright light overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. The light is bright overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. Light is bright overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. Light is bright overhead...

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