In the end, the Legos were the first warning.
Not the first incident, but the first time the Cosmos shouted "Oy! Look here!"
Callum, being a chunkable toddler of two, was left alone that fateful Sunday afternoon in the playroom with his "binkie" and a bucket of Legos.
Now, please note that these are the larger building blocks, not the smaller items, lest you assume these parents are cruel and neglectful.
Upon returning to the aforementioned room, with moist bliss on their brows, the mother gasped in astonishment and the father walked into his house.
Literally.
The fact that the house was inside the house, isn't a, whatchucallit, metaphysical conundrum, but more of a surprise.
Callum pudgily grabbed the last few green blocks and finished off the shrubbery near the front door.
The two-foot front door.
On the perfect five-foot Lego-rendered model of the family's home.
See what I mean.
So even if it wasn't the uncanny replication of their split-level that gave it away, or the troublesome idea that Callum wasn't tall enough to have completed the roof. The mere fact that there couldn't have been enough blocks in the bucket should have set the sirens screaming.
To his credit, the father wondered.
He even picked up the Lego container looking for the "Number of Pieces" line. But at the delightful coo of his youngling, he chalked it up to getting good value for his money and tossed the bucket aside.
Once again, delightful reasoning that young Callum was “so smart, aren’t you wittle man” completely overshadowed the fact that something was afoot.
"Oh come on!" the Cosmos screamed.
Callum wrapped his “binkie” around him and snorted.
The parents, delighted with the display, immediately desired to prove he was “gifted.” Within five weeks, Callum and his "binkie" traveled from the small town to the big town, playing in rooms with full of toys and blocks and teachers and questions and juice.
There was always juice, a concept the mother found to be a nuisance.
In the end, the conclusions were mixed. Autism and prodigy walled off the two extremes, with a large number of "he's a normal healthy boy" filling the spectrum. Of course, in the face of the evidence the parents could only conclude that Callum was a prodigy.
The Cosmos slapped its forehead and sighed.
When, two weeks later, on another sunny Sunday, Callum ended up ten-feet off the ground in the crook of an oak tree, the parents couldn’t point to their child and swoon “oh, he’s so smart.”
“Oh, he’s going to fall,” is more of a shrieking sentence.
Or later that month, after denying his son a sugary cookie, the father opened the kitchen door only to be buried by an avalanche of Oreos, little Callum peak-stride atop Mount Nabisco, his “binkie” in one hand and a cookie in the other.
As the evidence mounted, his mother had an inkling of an idea. But it’s important to note that she wasn’t aware of the idea. The idea winked at her behind a mask of smell.
A dirty, dirty smell.
And this smell led to the mother removing the “binkie” from a napping Callum for a washing.
When she stopped on the landing as the boy started shrieking, when she wrestled with a suddenly sentient swatch of duck-covered wool and when she saw it soar up the stairwell back into her son’s room and waiting arms, the idea finally tore off its mask and said “Gotcha!” in her mind.
“JOHN!!!!!” she yelled, for that was the father’s name.
And from below came a “what’s wrong, Martha” for that was the mother’s name. Soon the father appeared at her side on the landing. He glanced at her tousled hair and stunned look, then followed her eyes to the boy’s bedroom door.
A giggle emerged, trailed by a boy on a blanket.
A boy on a flying blanket.
“Carpet, actually,” the Cosmos whispered. “It used to be red. The duckies are what fooled me at first.”
Callum soared out above their heads, clutching a corner of the “binkie” in his chubby hand. He sailed down the steps and toward the vestibule.
The parents followed quickly, as parents are apt to do.
And with a whoosh, the door flew open and young Callum soared out, and up, and away.
For a moment, the mother thought she heard a small “grandma” on the breeze.
“Get the car, John!” And he did.
The Cosmos relaxed. For like the top hat in our Monopoly, the Cosmos occasionally loses a piece to its game and has to replace it with something else.
But a button wouldn’t be a suitable replacement for the Cosmos’ game.
And all its pieces are magic.