Staring back from the mirror was a blonde-haired, pudgy-cheeked little boy. Not a toddler, but not far removed from one. Your head looks slightly too big for your body. You shuck off your oversized teen clothes and the giant skate sneakers and continue staring. Your thighs are doughy but you can see that baby fat has started to melt off your body.
“How… how old’m I?” you ask.
Lao Yi smiles and writes a number on a paper. “This many.” You stare at the paper and the squiggle on it. Lao Yi laughs and holds up some fingers. “Count my fingers.”
You look shyly down at your tiny feet and back up—far up—at the wizened old man. “Um. One, two, free, four!”
“That’s right,” said Lao Yi. “You’re four years old. You won’t be a teenager for many years yet! You can grow and learn and play again.”
“But why can’t I read?” you ask, your last word coming out as “weed”.
“Because you are four! Maybe learn letters and numbers soon but your brain not yet ready. Your mind know how to do it but your body not ready yet. I prove it to you. Stand on one leg.”
You pull your right leg up and attempt to balance on your left leg, but you fall over immediately. Frustrated, you stand up and try again, trying to force your core to hold you in place, but once again you fall down.
“Can’t tell time either, or skip, or hold pencil right way,” Lao Yi continued. “All this in time!”
“I can too!” you shout and grab the pen Lao Yi had set down. You sit down on the floor and stick your tongue out in concentration as you grab the pen in your fist. “I know how!” you shout in your soprano voice as you try to force your fingers to hold the pen the adult way.
Lao Yi just started to laugh, which made you start to cry. “Why? Why four?”
The old man shrugged. “Old enough to be able to talk to people, young enough to learn again.”
You bawl, “But who will take care of me?”
Lao Yi smiled. “Your parents are coming now to get you.”
“My parents? My daddy die and my mommy old!” Why couldn’t you put together fluent sentences??
“Not old parents. New parents. From Lao Yi adoption service. Ah, here they are now.”
The doorbell jangled and a couple, in their early thirties, walked in. The woman was tall, blonde, and beautiful. The man was even taller—a mountain to you, and had big muscles and a thick beard and hairy arms.
“Lao Yi, you did it! He is perfect!” cried the woman. “He looks just like each of us!” The man grinned, walked over to you, and impulsively put his hands under your armpits and picked you up. You got dizzy for a second—no one had picked you up off the ground for decades—and then giggled involuntarily.
“You’re gonna come home and live with us on our ranch,” said the man. “You’re gonna learn to be a cowboy!”
“Yeah!” you shout, but then stop. “Am… I gonna still be me?”
“Of course,” said the woman. “But we’re going to change your name. You’re going to be Colt. Colt Anthony Lawrence. We’ve waited a long time to meet you.”
“And you’re gonna grow big and tall just like your daddy,” said the man. “You can learn to ride horses and play sports and build things, like me.”
You turn and look at Lao Yi. “You knew!”
He nodded. “Yes. But you weren’t happy and now you can be.” He clapped his hands and served the parents some tea, winking at you as he poured it out.