What's All This, Then?

I feel like I could tell a whole story in four seconds.

The first problem, of course, is that I've been doing this thing in this space here for a good long time and one thing it is most demonstrably not is a storytelling corner. I'm sure I've taken a swing at it here or there, but if I know me the way I think I know me, it came out rambly and convoluted, weighed down with precious asides and subordinate clauses because of the writing style I insist on persisting in. Its defining feature is its lack of defining features.

I think I'd be surprised at how much narrative or emotional energy one can fit into four seconds, or at least I'd have been a candidate for surprise this past Monday. If the me today now said something about it to the me who existed after Monday, I think the me then would have just nodded along, resigned, before turning back to reading exactly contradicting "informational" web pages about cholesterol-friendly diets. Apparently it's NOT the egg yolks you have to worry about. The real trouble is in the egg yolks. I think it's time someone pointed out that the internet isn't a repository of information, it's a store house for every version of information, which is actual information's negating antithesis. No matter what it is you need to know, you are almost mathematically guaranteed to find web pages purporting to tell you both A Thing and A Thing's Exact Opposite, both presented as fact. The internet is the box containing Schroedinger's cat, except when you open it, you observe that somehow there are actually TWO cats and both of them are both simultaneously alive AND dead. And the radioactive material has been nicked by the Iranians or some shit.

So Tuesday morning, I'm in bed, right? When I say morning, I mean it strictly in the technical sense as it was after the midnight barrier that broke me out of Monday into Tuesday, all done rather impressively with my eyes closed.

What I'm trying to say is it was like 2 am. So I was sleeping. And my phone rings. Well, not "rings" as such as it was my cellphone and it was on silent, so it kind of just lit up. The caller ID number was blocked, so I had no idea what I'd find if I answered. Being mostly asleep still, I answered.

ME: This is me.
VOICE: Is this [me]?
ME: Yes, this is me.
VOICE: This is the police. Does [my son's name] live there?

So now I'm awake. And here I am, at the start of the four seconds, where the whole story I was telling you about before exists. The next four seconds are measurable as time and certainly, to any objective outside observer not traveling any closer or further relative to the speed of light than I was, would have passed in exactly four seconds.

What I found out was that there exists a subjective spacetime divorced from the regular four dimensions we're used to. In that subjective space, one can be separated from the flow of standard experience by... something really difficult to metaphorize. I'm not sure if it's a cocoon or a python or what. All I know is that it's both invisible and real.

Time stops because of what happens next, right after the police on the phone at 2 am invoke the name of your child. What you have to do next (and there is really no choice here, as there is no option really to not know) is follow up with: "Why? What's happened? Is he OK?" except you reeeeeealllly don't want to ask that question, not because you don't want to know, but because you're not emotionally capable of knowing in case the answer is the one you'd strongly prefer it not to be. The revulsion of and rejection of the mere possibility that you're getting that call is palpable and nearly irresistible.

I say nearly irresistible because, as noted early, it's not actually physically possible to not ask. The unstoppable force of all-consuming parental concern meets the immovable object of absolute denial in contemplating harm coming to your child. Every time the unstoppable force is going to win. I mean, it's right there in the adjective.

In that four seconds, during which universes lived and died, I managed, even against my will to ask "Why? What's happened? Is he OK?" and wait, interminably, for the answer.

Turns out yes. He's OK. I couldn't have walked down the hall to check as he and his brothers were at his mother's house, as part of our regular joint custody schedule. The next question you'll be asking is why the police were looking for him at 2 am, the answer to which is going to have to be a slightly vague one: some social media stuff went down in which his named was mentioned in connection with a Potential Very Bad Thing, which in turn turned out to be the end result of a series of catastrophic decisions made in the minds of teenagers (not my boy this time, heavens be praised) all in the name of mischief. What I can tell you however is that, in the social media biome, what may be intended as mischief, if worded poorly enough and constructed in complete willful ignorance of any potential consequence, ends up looking a lot like a criminally actionable offense.

My own son a) was still alive, which is my favorite part, and a pretty massive take-away from any story that includes a 2 am phone call from police and b) spared any discipline, as was probably correct given his lack of involvement beyond someone else using his name. But we did get to spend a morning in a meeting room in the school office, with a police officer detailed to watch us. And before I got there, my ex got to watch the cops read our eldest boy his rights (as a precaution, just in case new information came out that implicated him in some way, which never happened).

But that can be her story, if she ever wants to tell it. This is the end of the one I had, which I can only say ended with things returning to absolutely normal remarkably quickly. It's not as sexy as "happily ever after," but I didn't have to hire a lawyer. Any story that ends that way, you almost have to smile about.