Charlie decides to become old this time. “Old like Grampa Walt!” Joy shouts.
That hurts. I’m not that old.
Although I understand that if the kids see Justin as old, when he’s almost thirty-two, that doesn’t bode well for how they see me.
Charlie’s hair grows white and long, and now it’s in a ponytail. He grows a white beard. His skin changes color, I notice. It’s browner, more tanned, and his face becomes wrinkled with deep wrinkles, as if he’d been exposed to the sun his entire life.
He now begins to grow bigger, but suddenly he stops and snaps back to looking like Charlie.
“Oh!” he says.
“What happened?” Joy asks.
He concentrates and tries to grow old again. Nothing happens.
“I can’t do it,” he says after a while. “I can’t change anymore.”
Joy makes an unhappy face. “I wish I could be a grownup. People would stop treating me like a kid!”
Charlie looks at her with shock. “Who treats you like a kid?”
“Everyone treats me like a kid! Everyone!”
Charlie shakes his head almost violently. “Joy. No one treats you like a kid. Your dad lets you go on adventures! He lets you drive Bonnie’s Revenge. You can go into strange places. You do super dangerous things and no one tells you anything. You don’t have to go to school. You don’t have to do homework. You don’t have to do almost anything that kids have to do. Everyone treats you like an adult!”
Joy looks at me and says, “Is that true, Grampa?”
I nod. “That’s absolutely true. There’s not a kid in the real--in the waking world whose parents treat you the way you’re treated.”
Joy stares at me then at Charlie. She looks like she heard news that she’s going to grow a third arm or something.
Then she waves at us with her hand, “You don’t know anything. You don’t know about me. Everyone treats me like a kid all the time!”
She goes away in a huff. Charlie goes after her.
(To be continued... )
—Told by Grampa Walt