Brian only had a second to stare at the boy in wonder before the car lurched forward through the intersection. It was possible the boy was just mentally challenged of course, but then what mother took a kid like that out in public in nothing but a diaper?
Brian began looking intently out the window at the passing houses, looking for something else out of place. It didn’t take long to find something. Brian’s eyes went as wide as saucers as they passed a small brown split-level a couple blocks from his house. Right there in the front yard was a rather large kiddie pool, and standing in it was a teen girl perhaps a few years younger than himself. She was standing in the pool naked but for a pink and white swim diaper and a pair of bright orange floaties on her arms. Her pert bare breasts, dripping with pool water, were exposed to every passing car while she stood there and flapped her arms, grinning like a cheerful idiot at all the passing traffic getting a free peep show.
As the drive to school continued Brian grew more and more certain that the whole world had gone mad. A young man who looked perhaps mid-twenties was riding a bike down the sidewalk, nothing unusual about that at first glance. But the bike he was riding was no ten-speed mountain bike or thin-tired racer. It looked like a simple kid’s bike complete with playing cards hitting the tires to make a motor noise. The man was shirtless and barefoot, his long toes gripping the bright green plastic pedals, ratty cut-off jean shorts hanging below his knees. There were more teens in strollers, riding tricycles, twenty-somethings walking along holding parents’ hands.
Brian was so wrapt watching the houses go by he didn’t even pay attention to where they were headed. It was only when they pulled up in front of a squat brick building with a basketball court and playground out front did he realise they were at the local elementary school, not the college campus. “Here we are!” Mom announced, putting the car in park.
The young man wasn’t listening, he was watching the “kids” on the playground. Twenty-somethings ran this way and that, helter-skelter across the tarmac. There were big hulking men wearing Pokemon t-shirts and shorts, sneakers with flashing lights and Velcro instead of laces. There were beautiful young women too, wearing shortalls, hair in pig-tails, jumping rope and playing hop-scotch. Brian understood now that there would be no escape from his mom. It wasn’t just him, it wasn’t just his house. The world had turned upside-down.