There was the sound of something breaking followed by a loud thud heard from behind Jeff. He turned from the chair he'd been sitting and thinking in to see that Harry standing and starring wide-eyed next to Jane who looked to be on the verge of tears. Their argument apparently having escalated while Jeff had been lost in his thoughts. One of Mom's potted plants she kept on a little stand near the window was toppled over, pieces of pottery scattered about Jane along with dirt and the plant all on the hardwood floor. Jeff was up in an instant as Jane's sniffles turned into crying.
"s--Sorry Jane... I didn't mean..." mumbled Harry oddly sincerely just as Jeff had reached the two of them.
"Jane, are you all right?" asked Jeff. Jane opened her eyes and blinked a few times, seeing Jeff apparently seemed to calm her down a bit.
She said meekly, "My head hurts." Beyond the clumps of dirt in her hair, there didn't seem to be anything too out of the ordinary--no blood that he could see at least. Likely just a bad bump on the head is all it was.
"What happened?" asked Jeff. Harry turned and looked up at Jeff and audibly gulped at him.
"I didn't mean to push her into the plant!" said Harry immediately.
"But you did, I saw you!" said a voice from behind Jeff. Before he knew it, Jeff saw something run past him and practically tackled Harry to the ground. What surprised Jeff was it was quiet Tommy, which took him a moment to process before he pulled his little brother off of the scared stiff Harry. Tommy hadn't done anything other than tackle Harry and pin him to the ground, but things were clearly escalating beyond control. Lizzie and Ryan surprisingly as well, were helping Jane up and getting the dirt out of her hair.
"You pushed her! I saw it!" insisted Tommy as Jeff held onto his brother by the wrist to keep him from pinning Harry again.
Seeing that nothing good was going to come from continued escalation of the circumstances, Jeff knew he had to separate them--Tommy and Harry at the very least.
"Tommy, go to your room."
"But Jeff!"
"Your room, now," insisted Jeff, and with a dejected head hanging low, Tommy walked off to his room.
"Harry, you stay right here and don't move a muscle until I get back, do you understand?" asked Jeff.
Harry nodded.
With those two taken care of for the moment, Jeff had Jane with Ryan and Lizzie closely behind, come with him into the kitchen to get an ice pack. After the three kids took a seat at the table, he quickly examined where Jane said it hurt. His suspicions were right, it was only going to be a nasty bump on the head. After wrapping the frozen gel pack in a clean dish towel, he handed it to Jane and told her to hold it where it hurt and to take it off if for a few minutes if her head felt too cold after a while before putting it back on. Lizzie then started telling a few jokes which started to distract Jane, while Ryan had dashed off and dashed back with Candyland and was eager to have them play. With Jane in surprisingly good hands, Jeff knew he'd have to talk with Harry and Tommy both next. First he went back into the living room to see Harry crying and trying to wipe his eyes free of the tears. Jeff purposely took a knee to get closer to Harry's own level--not wanting to intimidate him too much like he'd been when younger.
"Harry, why did you push Jane into the plant?" asked Jeff.
"I didn't mean to!" whined Harry between cries and sniffles.
"Whether you meant to or not, that doesn't change that it happened. All I want to know is why."
Harry could be stubborn, Jeff remembered, when he didn't want to say something, and that was definitely the case now as he whined, cried, and tried to rub his tears away.
"Answer me, Harry," insisted Jeff.
"I wanted to go outside and climb the trees, Jane said it was dangerous. I told her I do it all the time at home with Ryan and Tommy. She said it was dumb and that we could fall and get hurt," said Harry.
Jeff sighed internally. The trees in the backyard were definitely climb-worthy for six year olds, he remembered doing as much when their age, but Jeff recalled Jane having an older brother just a few years younger than Jeff who'd fallen, twisted his neck, and died. Jane's parents had likely instilled in her a fear of climbing as a result, these memories were concluding for him.
"Just because you don't get your way doesn't give you the right to push someone to make it happen, Harry. Clean this mess up."
"Are you gonna tell my Mommy?" asked Harry
And that, more than anything else made Jeff really decide what he'd ultimately have to do with Harry to keep further incidents like this from happening. "Just clean this mess up. There's a bin, dust pan and brush in the hall closet--and be mindful to get every little piece you see!"
Harry wiped his face with his arm and with red eyes nodded and ran into the hall to go and grab the needed items from the closet. Jeff would let Harry clean up his own mess first, and then send him back to preschool--hopefully with Jane, Ryan, Tommy, and Lizzie all older than him, Harry would be influenced by them to be better behaved than he was being the same age as them. And if that failed, well, having an actual baby to sit would just have to do. But for right now, Jeff needed to talk to his little brother. Jeff wondered what Mrs. Evans would say if she'd seen this happen. Tommy may be very sweet, quiet, and affectionate--but loyalty was something he took seriously, especially loyalty to his friends--enough so that Tommy was willing to stand up to others for them, going a bit far in the process, but that's something that Jeff could potentially tweak.
Jeff walked down to his brother's room--which used to be a room left for extra storage in his old life before Coach Thomas Smith had become Tommy Davis, Jeff's adopted little brother. He knocked on the door before entering, seeing his little brother sitting on a blue bean bag chair on the floor, hugging his legs to his chest. The room was an ideal little boy's room. Full of posters of superheroes, Pokemon, and the like. Toys were about the room, some of which Jeff remembered playing with when he'd been Tommy's age. Tommy had a bunk bed which Jeff recalled was for when Ryan would sleep over, occupying the top bunk as Tommy didn't like heights too much.
"Is Jane okay?" asked Tommy the moment Jeff entered the room. The genuine look of worry on Tommy's face
"She's fine. Nothing but a bump on her head. Ryan and Lizzie are playing a game with her right now," assured Jeff as he sat down cross legged and facing Tommy.
"But that's not what I wanted to talk with you about. You tackled Harry pretty hard back there."
"He hurt Jane and wasn't telling the truth," said Tommy
"He did, and he's going to be punished for that, but did that mean you had to tackle him?" asked Jeff
Tommy considered the question before shaking his head no.
"Then why did you do that?"
"Cause he hurt Jane," said Tommy
"But you didn't have to tackle him, Tommy. If he was continuing to hurt Jane and wasn't stopping, sure, then tackle him to get her off her, but Harry wasn't doing anything like that. Did he deserve to be tackled like that?"
"I guess not... but in movies"
"Movies have to be entertaining, Tommy, they're not like real life. People in movies sometimes do things because it's more entertaining that they do it that way, understand?"
Tommy shrugged, Jeff suspected he didn't really understand, but that didn't matter.
"So what do you think you should have done instead of tackle Harry?" asked Jeff
"Told him to get away from Jane?" asked Tommy
"Yes, and anything else?" asked Jeff
"Get between her and him?"
"Sure... but only if..."
Tommy looked confused.
"Only if an adult isn't around," finished Jeff.
"But what if doing all that doesn't make them leave?" asked Tommy immediately.
"Bullies pick on people who don't stand up to them, Tommy. Challenging them or letting them know someone isn't going to tolerate what they do to others is going to make them back down--especially if they feel no one else is going to tolerate it. It's not like the movies where everything ends up in a bar fight over anything, with a player piano in the background going while everyone's throwing punches at each other."
At the reference to the old western movies that they'd sometimes see referenced in old cartoons, Tommy giggled a little bit.
"Why don't you go join Jane, Ryan, and Lizzie in playing Candyland?" suggested Jeff.
Tommy nodded, stood, hugged Jeff and then hurried out of the room. Jeff stood and pulled out his phone and opened the app as he exited his little brother's room and walked back out to the living room.
To Harry's credit he'd done a decent job of cleaning up. The only sign that anything was wrong was the missing plant from next to the window. Harry was emptying the last of the dust pan into the bin when Jeff scanned him.
Name: Harry Swift
Age: 6
Mental Age: 6
Height: 3' 9"
Weight: 48 lbs
Build: Average
Body Fat Percentage: 6%
Gender: Male
Name: Harry Swift
Age: 4
Mental Age: 4
--Memory
----Relationships: Tommy Davis (neighbor/role model/brotherly), Ryan Huff (friendly), Jane Warner (friendly/sisterly), Lizzie Wolf (friendly)
Height: 3' 2"
Weight: 42 lbs
Build: Average
Body Fat Percentage: 7%
Gender: Male
--Alter Reality to Fit? Yes
--Change Clothes to Fit? Yes
Just as Harry put the dust pan, brush, and bin away, Jeff hit the TRANSFORM button and watched as the boy lost two more years, shrinking a few inches and losing a few pounds, growing smaller and cuter, as well as looking a little chunkier from the reacquired baby fat which pushed his belly out a little, but overall looking as an average preschooler. His clothes changing more in size rather than in style as the Oscar the Grouch t-shirt shrunk to fit him, as did his pants. His light up sneakers turned into regular velcro sneakers (apparently he now was too young to tie his own shoes) with pictures of Grover and Elmo on them. Harry's mullet shortened into a bowl cut, and suddenly Jeff went from remembering Harry being an irritating friend of Tommy and Ryan's to his next door neighbor's son who he babysat while they were away. Harry idolized Tommy and Ryan, and whenever he was over tailed them like he was their shadow--which could be a bit annoying sometimes for Ryan, but Tommy seemed to have taken to the role in stride, surprisingly--always sure that whatever he and Ryan did included little Harry in some fashion when Harry was over to play. Luckily at ages 4 and 6 there really wasn't much difference beyond in size that had them unable to include Harry in most things they did. Jane's mother hen personality had especially taken to little Harry in this new reality as she seemed to take responsibility for looking after Harry whenever the boys did want a break from having Harry tag-along with them. Harry seemed to really appreciate that and often came to her when he had a problem, and the two often seemed to act as little brother and big sister as a result of the connection they had built up over the last few years.
The complete change in how the group reacted to Harry was apparent by making him younger--and the change in Harry himself was noticeable to. With Tommy as his idealized big brother figure that he looked up to, Harry was a much calmer little boy--still prone to letting his curiosity get the better of him, but a disapproving look from Tommy was all it seemed to take to keep Harry in line anymore. And having someone who needed him seemed to have brought Tommy out of his shell a bit more as he was more prone to bring up his own ideas and sometimes challenge Ryan when Ryan wanted to ditch Harry and Tommy didn't. And with Harry being younger than Jane, the ice pack was now gone, and the plant and the pot it had been in were returned to the little side table by the window. In this reality, Harry hadn't pushed Jane, he'd never consider doing something like that at all--not to Jane.
Harry toddled his way into the kitchen to join the quartet in playing Candyland. When Jeff had finished putting away his phone, he found Harry was leaning his head on the edge of the table watching as the four older kids played. When it was Tommy's turn, Tommy let Harry climb up into his lap and move his piece for him, which pleased Harry a lot. Jane and Lizzie beamed at Tommy for different reasons, while Ryan rolled his eyes.
Now that his charges were all good for the moment, perhaps it was time to turn his attention to the nasty neighbors?