I overheard these fragments in a dining car, facing backwards.

• Traumatized people tend to have a peculiar mixture of intense observational powers and cavernous blind spots.
• Think of this as setting spray for your aura.
• Invisible colors? we don’t even realize all the different ways we can be blind.
• Couldn’t you find any place to sit with some sun? I’d like a little sun.
• Tell your mama we gonna be late!

Imitation. Imitation vanilla and banana — almost as good as the real things. Imitation, form of flattery, reportedly sincerest. How babies learn to talk? How writers learn to write. How chatbots learn to — oh god, never mind.

Reproducing things we’ve heard, for narrative, informational, cautionary, commemorative, ritual, satirical, or celebratory purposes: forms of imitation. Memetics?

Secretly communicating with each other in the dark forest, rallying the troops before we infiltrate the fortress — bird calls!

Crows, calling back and forth from oak to giant maple. Respecting the dead. Resurrecting echoes of the primeval.

pigeon

Daaaaaad!!! They’re doing innerdations!!

Hey, I just realized, when Vee’s sister (I’m gonna call her Viola) ratted us out in frustration, she sounded exactly like Candace! Never mind that Candace was the older sister, while Viola was Vee’s younger sister; and I’m not even going to get into which one of us was Phineas and which was Ferb, because this isn’t about that (OK fine, I was definitely the Ferb in terms of loquacity around strangers, though I was not, alas, an engineering genius).

Vee and I were bouncing languidly on his trampoline, with approximately the same cadence as kids in water that’s almost but not quite too deep. Seventh grade was a few months old. We mostly had the hang of it. Within a few more months, I would be thoroughly disillusioned with it because it wasn’t grown up enough, but for now, it was just weird and laughably dumb, the object of relatively good-natured complaints — the soldier bitching about the mess hall; the office worker griping about the copier, solidarity through shared aggravation.

It was also disorientingly diverse, because while there were several K–6 schools all around town, Schultz was the only place to go for 7th grade (except for a handful of religious options), so the sheltered demographic of my elementary school was no longer the only one represented. Getting used to that spawned several other pigeons, which we shall discuss when it’s their turn.

So we were taking turns gently mocking the various characters in our new scholastic life. One would sit, bouncing lightly, while the other stood up and bounced more vigorously while performing.

This is my imitation of Principal So-and-So! assumes monkey posture; speaks administrative catchphrase in goofy voice

This is my imitation of my French teacher! assumes elegant posture; speaks faux Français in goofy voice

This is my imitation of our gym teacher trying to be a math teacher! assumes football posture; speaks simple equation haltingly

And so on.

Viola dragged the glass door open and wandered out from the lower-level family room to the scrubby, oaken backyard and joined us, uninvited, on the trampoline. I usually liked it when she got bored enough to do that, because she was bratty and annoying and younger than me and Vee and therefore gave us something to bond over, someone to be older than. Her raven-haired petulance added a certain prickly texture to the fabric of our adolescent conversation. A third element. Then whenever she left us alone again, whether by choice or by sibling hostility or parental edict, a subtle relief flowed into the space she left behind. The sweetness after the lemon.

Vee and I continued our game.

This is my imitation of our bus driver! says something corny; crashes the bus, careening ass-first into the trampoline

This is my imitation of —

Viola watched for a few moments, and I don’t know what it was about our artless charades that pissed her off — maybe just that her elementary-school perspective didn’t afford her any viable way to participate and belong — but she cranked her voice up to tattle-tale volume, and called out, “Daaaaaad!!! They’re doing innerdations!!”

Their dad happened to be (or maybe didn’t just happen to be, maybe she saw him before we did and that’s why she chose that moment to register a complaint) in the vicinity. “They’re doing what now?” Her mispronunciation made him smile sideways. “Innerdations?”

So instead of getting me and Vee in trouble, she got innerdated herself. I can only imagine the impotent rage, the seething frustration —

There was probably a reassurance, an explanation of why we weren’t really being mean, weren’t hurting anyone. Viola departed forthwith; Vee and I moved on to some other aimless diversion. It was, after all, just a day.

I wonder if we did an impression of Clay Waller. Probably not. I didn’t know him that well, and I don’t think Vee did either. I remember him from gym class, mainly. I don’t think I had to wrestle him because we was in a smaller weight class than I was. He was compact, not shy or awkward like me. Seemed to “fit in,” whatever that means, as far as I could tell. And just the other day I learned he grew up to be a murderer. So that’s horrible and weird.

I actually don’t remember for sure whether I remember him from 7th grade or from junior high — but either way, damn, I don’t even know where to go with this after bringing that up.

This is my imitation of a blogger having no idea how to conclude a post. sits at desk in late July while fan blades make white noise; stares into digital space; overhears various phantom voices colliding, overlapping, fading steadfastly into the ever-expanding night