I heard laughter from behind me, and I turned to find a younger version of my mother there.

She was chatting with some older woman that I didn’t recognize.

“Oh, there’s me!” I pointed out, surprised at how tiny I was, and how adorable, with my little round cheeks, clutching at my mom’s coat.

I was maybe four, maybe three.

“You are correct.”

He floated past me, closer to the little group.

I followed, kneeling down to get a closer look at myself.

“Do I get a cookie?”

I asked absently, trying to straighten out little me’s coat, only to have my hand pass through her.

“It’s so good to see you,” my mom gushed above me.

“I keep meaning to call you, but you know how it is.”

But if the other woman did, in fact, know, I would never find out, because the little me suddenly tugged at mom’s coat more severely.

Mom bent down, nearly bumping heads with me, if my head had been solid at the time, and little me whispered something into her ear, too quietly to hear.

“Excuse us,” mom said, taking the little girl’s hand.

“Oh, no problem,” the woman smiled. “Gotta get to the potty?”

Mom’s expression turned slightly embarrassed as she shook her head.

“Well, no, she already did.”

When the woman looked down at me – both of me , technically, since I was still down by myself – with confusion, mom clarified,

“She’s still in diapers.”

“Oh,” the woman blinked but managed to cover.

“Well, some of them can be pretty difficult.

She’ll get it eventually.”

“I hope so,” mom sighed.

“It doesn’t seem like it sometimes.”

The woman gave her a sad smile and patted her arm, smiled down at me, and headed off into the vast jungles of the store after saying her goodbyes.

“Let’s go, sweetie,” mom said, leading the other me away as well.

“It’s not like I’m the only person in the world who potty trained late,” I told Dr. Fishenstein. “What’s the big deal?”

But he didn’t answer; perhaps he didn’t have time, because the yellow light chose that moment to show up again.

After a sharp rush of wind, the light became the rays of the sun – or had it been all along? – and I raised a hand to shield my eyes before thinking just to lower my gaze.

By doing so, I was able to see that we were now standing in the middle of a playground.

The other me, which we were obviously here to watch, was about six, pigtailed and short.

If it wouldn’t have sounded so conceited, I might have pointed out how cute I was.

I didn’t see my mother, but I assumed she was around somewhere, and even left myself alone for a minute looking around the playground for her.

At least until I noticed Ash, hanging out by the slide, already chatting up some cute girl, with freckles and a tiny little nose, but a horribly annoying laugh.

Assuming he was supposed to be watching me instead, I settled back down into the sandbox.

“If you look closely,” Dr. Fishenstein said, “you can tell that you’ve managed to get yourself into some big girl panties at this point.”

I shuddered a little. “Okay, that’s a little creepy.”

“I’m just helping you find your path,” he claimed. “Believe me, I take no pleasure from discussing your underpants.”

“Then don’t do it,” I begged. “Please.”

“I’m only trying…”

“Yeah, I’m well aware. But if you could…”

“Bloody hell, now we’ve gone and missed it.”

If he’d had a voice, it would have sounded annoyed.

Instead, I guess his bubbles popped a little more quickly.

It’s probably difficult for a fish to get emotions across.

I turned back to myself, only to find a large wet spot spreading across the seat of my short-alls.

Somehow, I didn’t find myself too surprised at the situation, despite my fish’s claimed indifference to the state of my panties.

The smaller me didn’t seem shocked at the development, either. In fact, she didn’t give any indication of noticing at all.

She continued working on her sandcastle, though at the time it looked more like just a random pile of sand as if everything were normal.

“That’s just how little ones are,” I reasoned out loud.

“They have accidents. Why is this some big deal?”

But I think Dr. Fishenstein was mad at me, because he refused to answer, and he didn’t take us anywhere else.

We just stood – floated, in his case – there and watched.

All of a sudden, I saw myself fall down into the sand.

I figured it was simple klutziness until I heard giggling.

“What do you think you’re doing here, baby?” the little boy asked.

He looked to be a touch younger than the young me, and an equal touch shorter, but by the way, I was cowering, you’d have thought he was Ash’s size.

“Don’t call me that!” I sniffled, scrambling to my feet.

“Why not?” he asked, moving closer.

“That’s what you are if you need diapers.”

I had been holding out a slim hope that I was saving up some brilliant move to show the boy who was boss.

Instead, as I backed away, I stumbled back and landed on my already sand-coated butt and started to cry exactly like what I was claiming not to be.

Honestly, I was starting not to like the little me.

I had forgotten what a pushover I used to be.

“I don’t need diapers!” I protested.

I guess it probably sounded a little less absurd to me when I was that age, but looking at it now, it was hard not to laugh, or cry, at myself, making such an absurd claim.

And even just needing to, especially to defend myself from that little boy.

I watched myself stare up at him, eyes quivering and shimmering, and I begged myself not to do it.

The boy wasn’t even doing anything, just looking down on me as I sat there in my wet pants.

Apparently that was enough, however, as the younger me quickly disregarded my request and began to bawl.

“Can we just go?” I asked Dr. Fishenstein.

“Please? I got past all this, I really don’t need to see it again, no matter what you and Fido think.”

“Just a little longer,” he said.

Ash glanced over towards the sandbox, apparently remembering what he was at the playground for in the first place upon hearing my cries of distress.

I was a little surprised to see him bolt away from the freckled girl and over to my side, where he stood towering over the little boy.

“Why don’t you go find somewhere else to play?”

I doubt he would have actually hit someone so much younger than himself, but upon standing up and moving to get a better look at the scene, I began to wonder.

His eyes had a strange fire to them that I could remember way in the back of my mind, my knight in an almost-white T-shirt.

“Fine,” the boy pouted.

“The sandbox is all gross now, anyway.

Plus, swings are better.”

And with that, he ran off, leaving me and Ash alone.

Only long enough for him to help me to my feet, though, and then the freckled girl wandered over from the slide, all dreamy-eyed.

“You’re so sweet,” she gushed at my brother, then wrinkled her nose when she saw the wet spot on my clothes.

“You don’t actually know her, do you?”

Both of me looked up at him, wondering what he was going to say.

And for the briefest second, likely too short for me to have noticed the first time around, I could tell that he was wondering as well.

He wiped the tears from under my eyes and gently took my hand.

“She’s my sister,” he informed the freckled girl.

“Oh,” she said, unsure of what else to add, and so finally she just wandered off.

“Are you okay?”

Ash asked in the meantime.

I nodded in response, and he smiled down at me.

“Let’s get you home, okay?”

I tried to follow as he led me away,

With my little face upturned towards his with a look of pure wonder and awe the whole time,

However, even as I took the first step, the light began to flood the area.

Slowly this time, washing out the background of the playground first, then consuming the sky and the ground, and then, finally, the image of me and my brother.

“I forgot we were so close,” I said quietly.

“Then I would bet you also forgot this.”

As the last bubble popped, we were in a schoolroom.

I was somewhere in the first through the third-grade range, though to be honest they all sort of blended together.

I couldn’t honestly say which.

Looking at myself, seated at my desk, intently working with some crayons, didn’t help, either.

I did notice there were a tooth or two missings, which I thought meant I was closer to the first grade than third, but I wasn’t entirely certain.

I braced to watch myself have another accident, sure that when I raised my hand after the teacher asked if anyone was ready it was to ask, too late, for permission to go to the bathroom.

Instead, when I was called on, I got up from my desk and picked up the drawing I’d been working on, holding it up for the rest of the class to see and try to decipher.

I could tell it was supposed to be a person, but other than that, I have to say the current me was just as baffled as the former me was pleased with her work.

Luckily, apparently part of the assignment was explaining, as I then started to talk.

“This is my hero,” I said, talking too quickly and without much in the way of volume.

“It’s my big brother Ash, and he’s the best big brother in the world.

He’s in the Boy Scouts, and he has a bunch of badges, and he always looks out for me.

When I grow up, I want to be just like him.”

I started to set the picture down, then picked it back up again, looking nervously around the room until at last I declared, “The end!”, about three times as loud as any of the rest of it, and sat down again.

I was expecting a little more, but the light was already bleeding through the room.

This time it was seeming to originate from the clock on the wall.

the old kind of clock, with hands and all.

“That’s it?”

“It is.”

The room that replaced the classroom was my own, and the one I had come from earlier that night.

It was not one of the many others I’ve lived in over the years.

“I don’t think I get it.”

If I thought that would encourage any kind of explanation,

I was sadly mistaken, as there was no real help to be found in,

“I’m not surprised,” nor in the,

“Perhaps later you will,” that followed shortly after.

“Is this what this whole night is going to be like?” I asked.

“I think I’d prefer to just go to sleep.

I can only watch me pee on myself so many times.

That may be how you roll, but honestly, I just don’t…”

But when I looked around, Dr. Fishenstein was already swum back into my clock, as it changed from twelve fifty eight to twelve fifty nine.

“Yeah, thanks a lot,” I grumbled. Stupid fish.

He didn’t even give me a chance to point out that he wasn’t a real doctor.

In a way, I kind of wished Dr. Fishenstein had stuck around for an extra minute or so, instead of running off so soon.

Not because I particularly liked him,

now that he’d died and learned to communicate with me,

or because I wanted to sit through more pointless flashbacks of my rather inglorious past,

but so I wouldn’t have been stuck on my own, wondering what to expect next.

I hadn’t had any other pets after Dr. Fishenstein’s untimely demise.

This wasmostly on account of our relocations, from dad’s job, growing more frequent again, after a fairly long – by our standards, anyway – stay in Maryland, where Fido had lived out her life, and Dr. Fishenstein had started his.

What, then, would be coming to see me once one A M rolled around?

And what was it going to show me?

What was all this leading to?

At the time, I couldn’t for the life of me see the point.

This only made me even more certain that it was all just some strange, elaborate dream.

Perhaps, as dreams sometimes did, it would end up going in some new direction.

Maybe there wouldn’t be a third visitor, much less a fourth.

After all, there were no more memories of pets for my sleeping mind to exploit; it might simply give up.

I nodded, feeling somehow sure that was what would happen after all, up until I heard a throat clearing behind me.

“Or maybe not,” I muttered under my breath, turning around slowly.

The first thing I saw as I turned was a large mound of white fur.

As I got further around, I saw even more white fur.

Once I had gotten all of my next guide in my sight, I saw still more white fur, with a large black nose seemingly stuck haphazardly on one end.

As I was staring, two eyes open, blue as the morning sky, and finally, I realized just what I was looking at.

When I was about twelve, we were living out in the country in Texas, near a sheep farm.

We’d visit the older couple that owned it every now and again.

Or, rather, my parents would visit them, and I and Ash would go out and explore the farm.

The sheep themselves were not particularly interesting, though the lambs were cute, there were also a couple of big, white dogs that lived with the sheep.

They were about the same size as the sheep, sometimes bigger, and there was one that had the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

I’d wanted more than anything to have that dog for my own.

I was still having trouble with bullies at school then, and I wanted to take him with me every day, and just wait and see if they picked on me then.

I also thought that he might be big enough for me to ride, which would also have been pretty cool.

I had, obviously, never gotten around to “liberating” him from the farm, though, and once we moved away, I’d pretty much forgotten about him.

And yet, here he was, laying on, and taking up nearly all of, my bed.

I was pretty sure he’d gotten a little bigger, but I wasn’t sure exactly how much, since he had been pretty large, to begin with.

“What are you here to show me?”

I asked, after staring into his eyes for a silent minute or two.

He stared at me for a little longer, and then he blinked, plunging my room into darkness for a split second before he opened them again, and I found myself somewhere quite familiar.

“You know where you are, don’t you?” he inquired, his voice both loud and slow, like lazy summer thunder.

He was still laying down, on the sidewalk now, looking even larger than before as people walked through him.

It wasn’t long before one of those people was me, hands wrapped into fists and then stuffed into the pockets of my jeans, looking ever so much as if I had absolutely no idea where I was, or even what I should be searching for to correct that.

“First day of high school,” I said quietly.

The dog didn’t bother to answer; he didn’t have to.

Now I was really confused.

Did he really think I’d have forgotten this?

It had only been a few months ago, and my memory wasn’t -that- terrible.

Well, obviously, since that was where all this was coming from…

I began to follow myself up the steps to the front entrance, only to overtake myself very quickly.

I decided to go all the way up to the doors, then turned.

The other me hadn’t gotten much further, and my head was ducked down, like I was being marched off to my execution, and didn’t have the courage to take one last look at the world before leaving it.