Oliver

I have an alternative self, an alter ego, a persona I find can creep up on me without warning. Without provocation.

It always starts with a green flash.

A video recorder on the ground.

My Australian Terrier Oliver. He knows me.

But my alter ego, Oliver growls at.

He’s a good dog. He was born in 1991, summer. I was eleven and eager to show my responsibility and aptness to truly respect a life other than my own. I adopted him out of a farm, where my mother’s friend Adrianne and her many animals, forested overgrowth and vines were her only companions. My mother called her Fern from Charlotte’s Web with her dirty overalls and ponytail, wide eyed and youthful even in her old age. I got my pure-bred Oliver for a good price. Four hundred fifty.

Friend’s prices.

I had to save for half of it doing odd jobs for neighbors, chores and re-staining the entire porch behind our house. My dad put up the rest.

My mother always told me to be careful when I rode my bike. We lived near Creve Coeur Lake, and there was a stretch of road leading to the lake that was a winding downward spiral path. I always sped down it without caring about cars.

After I got Ollie, as I sometimes called the little spunky butt, I decided to get a basket for him. He was tiny then and fit perfectly.

I took a few practice runs with a heavy throw pillow my mother used in the living room and saw that if I kept my palm near the edge of the basket, the pillow might wiggle a bit or jostle, but it would not fly out.

I talked to old Ollie that night in my bed and told him after school I’d take him out for a ride and then a long, long walk along the sandy parts near the lake. I told him he’d be safe.

We would get a soda at the 7-11 off of Bennington plaza and watch the other dogs and people walk by, and see the kids running and the rest of the bunch in their canoes. I’d show him Dripping Springs.

An Indian Princess named Memetonwish fell in love with a fur trapper, and was forbidden by her father to ever see him again once he found out of their love. She was so heartbroken and lovelorn, she leapt from the top of the falls to her death. This story had always haunted me. I always felt her pain and spirit in these slow moving falls.

I thought of her tragic story all day and my impending ride with Ollie during school.

Yes I had friends. But did I ever truly feel like I belonged? No.

The real question was did I want to fit in? No. I liked to have my time alone.

Having my idea of who I was, a loner who liked fishing, stepping in cool blue waters to stand perfectly still to fly fish, riding my bike for hours with the wind whipping through my hair and hitting face so perfectly, and being with my dog Ollie was all I pictured as a whole definition of life. All I needed.

Oh, and my video recorder.

I recorded everything. I recorded couples walking down the street, holding hands. I recorded grandmother’s playing with their grandchildren at the park. I recorded people at cafes and how they would look at each other or sometimes not look at each other. I wanted to make films when I grew up too. Silent films about people and how they were so lonely even surrounded by so many.

I especially loved to record when I went down that winding steep road to the lake. The feeling of zooming past all the cars and people in their wide windows driving so fast but I felt so much faster, free and wild as I’d sometimes lean into the handlebars and lift my feet up, seeing how long I could get away with closing my eyes before widening them with a bit of exquisite fear and exhaling out that whipping breeze, inhaling in that hot red summer sun.

After school, I ran in to grab Ollie and placed him in the basket. He made a tiny puppy yelp as his blue and white bottom plopped onto the curved basket and I patted his head.

“Time to go buddy!” I say and grab my helmet and place it on my head with gusto. It was a windy day but sunny and I was glad I had no homework to do later.

I ride slowly at first to adjust to my puppy’s weight and think of how grateful I was to have Oliver with me. It felt so calm and perfectly peaceful with him in my basket. I didn’t care if anyone from school saw me either. I was only eleven, after all. Still basically a kid.

We were at the tip-top of the road, the exhilaration of sliding down even a bit as I held my hand near where Ollie was at, was almost too much to bear. But, I knew it was going to be a blast, as I saw no cars at all. I finally let us free fall.

They say during certain times in your life, time can stand still, can melt away everything from your field of vision and all you can focus on is that brief moment of time. It’s as silent as it is intolerably loud. I had seen it happen in the movies. I had watched when two people across the room lock eyes and the room melts away, and everyone around also blurs, and they intensify in your view. Like a magnifying glass.

Those scenes scared me. I never wanted that much focus or attention on me. I loved the quiet noiseless wallflower that I could be. Being loud and obnoxious and annoying with friends just to show off your connections to them, was more exhausting than fun. I did it purely out of obligation.

The best memory I’ve ever had was with Oliver free falling down that winding, steep road. That was my last comfort as my dreams cascaded and tilted into a massive cracked moon of my very deep memory.

We reached the end of the road.

It wasn’t until I took that relieved, shaky breath in, checking Oliver and making sure he was okay, that I saw it.

The slow moving springs were bursting and overflowing. I started recording.

Suddenly I felt myself in a sense of wonder and deep melancholy.

What would my life Be like without Ollie? I have no siblings.

Oh yeah. My alter ego.

That day at the overflowing Dripping Springs, I found myself having the worst panic attack I ever had in my life.

The greenery surrounding the overflowing waters made me dizzy. Ollie clamored around me, and though I attempted to retract that negative feeling deep inside, the supposed calm surroundings only made it so much worse.

I thought of my mom. That day at my Aunt’s. My mom and dad were fighting awfully late that night, and it continued throughout the next morning. All day.

A swing. I’d lapse into a fit of phantom day dreams on that wooden swing that was tied to a tree. I’d lazily swing into the forest, the green surrounding me, the lights trickling into shadow. The air so fresh and the sun so hot.

I’d imagine I’d be in a new world, a universe of my own, and that swing took me there. Until…

Unintelligible screaming.

A slam to the ground outside my Aunt’s pool. My name in a cat-like yelp.

My dad on the floor. He had been drinking.

My dad had been the one who cried out my name. I looked over from my swing, and saw my mother zeroing in on me. Like those people in the movies.

I told her to leave him alone. She had hit him with her poolside books she’d bring along.

She didn’t like me saying anything to defend him, especially since he was a drinker. But I did. The drive home was a mad house. She was swerving and going way to fast. Then, she tells us when we hit the bridge back to home, she’ll drive us over it. Into the water.

I went into a fetal position, waiting for it all to end. It didn’t.

We got home. My dad left, getting help at the hospital and then going to enlist more spiritual support at Alcoholics Anonymous. My mom was good in spurts. She eventually fell into disrepair after my dad got better. She couldn’t handle his recovery when she still felt broken.

My alter ego had emerged that day on the swing, a comfort zone to protect myself.

I spit and curse and give out dagger-like glares that mirror my own mother’s when she’s in fit of hysteria, and I feel as alive as that pulsing, overgrown forest that leapt my imagination into a heavenly splendor.

It turned out that day, it came out again for the last time.

Ollie leapt up anyway even as he growled, and looked at me, deep like a human’s. Soft and sorry and almost wet with what looked like tears.

The contact in his unwavering stare brought me back down to earth.

I took in a shuddering breath, held his puppy face to my cheek, and felt myself crying. Crying so hard, but it felt like relief.

I dropped my recorder down and started to write instead. I write of lost princesses stuck in the sun-lit running waters that slowed and quickened in a strange almost paranormal manner, of my own lost weight that I thought made me so paper thin. I brought it back on the pages. I sunk into that crippling pain that was my slow moving stream, stagnant and lost, and brought back the sanctity of the overflowing words I felt so deeply, sharing with all.

Ollie was the first to break through my barriers, the ones I set up to keep others from knowing me, and to this day, I still have his warm eyes engrained in my heart.