"Bird-Watcher"

You know the person I'm referring to here. You remember him from second grade, the one with the interesting "shock" of hair, the quirky, disheveled kid, somewhat evasive and "mumbly" in speech, obtuse about gravity, unaware of his own body, often roaming about, staring off into space, day-dreamy, neither confident nor entirely phobic. His teachers shook their heads at him because he would always find windows to sit by and stare; he enjoyed drawing birds, liked watching birds and following birds around, hoping to fly.  Colorful exotic birds enchanted him: robins and red jays, bullfinches, grosbeaks, cardinals. He made funny gurgling noises for no reason; he was a savant in a few areas (math, spelling), but quite average in others. He had a fascination for cookies, although he never ate them.  Besides birds, he was drawn to clouds, to trees, to ladders, to roofs, ceilings, kites,  escalators, elevators - to anything moving in an upward direction.  Many of the other children found him amusingly strange; some were annoyed with him and reprimanded him; some found him tedious. A few felt sorry for him and became his confidants. When he was not caught up in his day-dreams of flight, he was an intense observer of other people. He stared at them without staring; he sized them up and found them wanting, but was not judgmental. He accepted them. He seldom cried. He had a rather pleasant laugh - a high-pitched chortle echoing up into space. People learned that they could trust him with their money or their marbles. He was refreshingly honest, without malice, without greed. He did not have a sweet tooth. He was not a pariah, not the prey of bullies - more like a "novelty act" with few friends, but enough allies. Ambition existed for him, but had nothing to do with amassing power (no future there) or acquiring a fortune or building any kind of empire. He was not a hoarder or a collector. His best friends were two girls, who happened to be twins. Their names were (oh, I forget...), but their nicknames were Appie and Zippy. They were twins, but they were very different. Appie liked to pinch people as a way of saying hello; she collected flower petals and bug samples. She loved gardens and any kind of organic life forms. She railed against pollution. Zippy was more the indoors type; she studied music and played the cello until she discovered books. Along with books, she enjoyed arranging and organizing little souvenirs on the shelves in her room. I guess you could say she had a menagerie of miniature animal-vegetable-and-mineral specimens. And stuffed animals. And little men that were too small to be called dolls. She had no dolls. She was the most literate of the group - precocious was the word people used. She stared at people with the same old-soul wisdom. She shared that quality with the bird-watcher and with her sister. The twins had "theories" about everyone and everything, yet they considered these quite dangerous and "top secret." Some of the theories involved alien visitation, but many others were astrological in nature. The twins believed that birthdays were important and could predict how a person's life would unfold. The shape of a person's face was important too as was eye color combined with arm length, shoe size and manner of walking. Entire reservoirs of thought and feeling were condensed into nods and winks about certain individuals, who conformed to certain patterns under the twins' watchful gaze. Aside from the bird-watcher, Appie and Zippy spoke mostly to one another and a girl down the street - Tessa - who had a garden. The most dramatic thing to ever happen to the trio happened during the summer of 1978 when something terrible almost happened to Tessa. The others witnessed the event that almost was and after that it became their secret legacy.  Tessa recovered from the near tragedy that did not happen, but she was nervous afterwards. The bird-watcher liked Tessa quite a bit (especially after this big event) and she felt the same way about him; he would stop and talk every day almost - walking past her garden - but never when the twins were around. He spoke to the twins when they went on nature excursions and he was "hunting" for birds to draw. But he almost never saw Tessa when the twins were there or vice versa, although the twins considered Tessa their good friend. After the near-tragic event almost occurred, the friends spoke of "before" and "after" as a way of charting time. Before referred to those "innocent, carefree, giddy times," while after meant those "subsequent, heavy-laden, cynical days." Tessa was the bird-watcher's confidant, on equal par with the twins, but different nevertheless. Her ambition in life was to be a prophet, to see into the future; she believed that, although the twins had their theories, which she very much respected, she had her special intuitions. She just knew about events-yet-to-happen. She could discern good omens from bad. There was one awkward boy in the neighborhood, Jerry,  an artist of sorts with a large sketch-book - who the bird-watcher got along with despite the fact that Jerry was waylaid in bed with severe allergic reactions and other, possibly psychosomatic ailments. Jerry would come to the window of his upstairs bedroom and show the bird-watcher various drawings from his sketchbook. Jerry liked to draw monsters, but he always gave the bird-watcher helpful tips on how to sketch bird faces, bodies, silhouettes, etc. and how to add in plausible bucolic backgrounds.