Timmy was born in September 1962. I think it was a Friday. He came into the world blind and unable to walk. I was only a year old when Timmy was born. When I turned six, I remember feeling bad for him and wondering why God let Timmy be born blind and unable to see and walk like other kinds. That might have seemed like a lot of curiosity for a little kid. It kind of was. I was born curious though and often wondered about many things.
I used to wonder why the planes in the sky were so little and what the tiny people in them looked like and where they were from. I wondered why old people came into life old instead of young like me. But this is about Timmy.
Though he couldn’t see, Timmy was the nicest kid ever. He always said kind words and never got in trouble like most of my friends did. Timmy sang like an angel. When he sang in the pew in church, everybody looked at him with wonder. He was so good Pastor Jenkins allowed him to be the only kid singing in the church choir. Geez, he was so good. I thought I could sing but people told me to stop or held their ears when I wrecked songs with my off-key voice. That ended my future as a famous singer. I was no Timmy.
Timmy was a brainiac. It was as if God had given him extra smarts to make up for not being able to see. Some said blind people got other abilities to make up for being sent into the world blind. Others said that wasn’t true. I never knew what the real answer was. But I knew it seemed God had given Timmy more smarts than anyone else. Timmy could hear a book read once and tell it back to you like he was a recorder. I guess he had what is called a photographic memory. I didn’t have that. I had to study a lot to remember even a little.
Timmy did something I thought was crazy for him to try. He learned Jujitsu. I thought to myself how can a blind kid learn something like that? I was wrong. Timmy got so good at Jujitsu that he beat up a bully who was picking on me, a big bully. The bully got pinned on the ground by Timmy and cried and ran home when Timmy let him up.
I never saw the bully after that. I heard he was so embarrassed by being beat up by a blind kid that he begged his mother to send him to another school. I also heard he got hit by a car and died like a punishment from God for fighting a blind kid. I don’t know which was true or if there was another reason I never saw the bully again. I only know he was never seen again at my school or anywhere else. It’s strange how in your life you only see some people briefly and then you never see them again. It’s kinda like they die on you and are out of your life just like a person who really dies. I often wonder what happened to many of those disappearing people like I wondered what happened to Timmy.
At age 18 he decided he wanted to turn his wheelchair into a rocket ship. I thought he was joking until a few months later when I saw what looked like a big fake rocket on the back of his wheelchair. Timmy started counting down 10 … 9 …. 8 …. And I laughed at Timmy’s antics. 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … Blast off!
Then zoom! Timmy and his wheelchair turned into a vibrating translucent green color and blasted into the sky above the clouds. I heard the sonic boom you hear when an airplane breaks the sound barrier, and Timmy was gone. As I stood there staring at the sky, I kept thinking Timmy and his wheelchair would appear out of the clouds at any time and land on the ground where Timmy started from. But Timmy never came back. And nobody ever found him. I wondered if when he broke the sound barrier he broke into another dimension. Otherwise, I’m sure the many search and rescue efforts on land and in the air would have found some trace of Timmy and his wheelchair.
My other theory was that the translucent green color Timmy and his wheelchair turned into might have meant Timmy was an alien, which could explain his super intelligence and how he was good at everything. It could have meant he went home to some distant planet. I learned later this was probably the best theory because Timmy’s mother was a UFO fanatic and before Timmy was born claimed she’d been abducted by aliens. When I first heard that, I wasn’t sure about her claim because she believed in the abduction when she was hypnotized by a crazy lady who dressed like a wizard and often predicted the aliens were coming on certain dates, but they never came. Just like Timmy never came back.
Bob Boyd