The Dream

Chapter Four : Alex

4: Alex

Alex Taylor was a precocious, adventurous 12-year-old little boy. But if you asked him he'd tell you he was closer to 13 because his birthday was in a couple of months. He was an only child to John and Mary Taylor. His mother was a teacher who taught middle school English and his father was a fix it man who had his own little shop where he repaired all kinds of things from clock radios to vacuum cleaners to television sets. John's shop was attached to one side of their house and there were always weird little gadgets and extra clocks and radio's and CD players' lying around, some working and some not.

Alex loved that growing up and he had a mechanical and electrical knack just like his dad did. He loved tinkering with things and figuring out how things worked and how to make things work that didn't work. His dad would let Alex help around the shop on weekends and during the summer when he wasn't in school. And Alex loved those moments because he was doing the two things he loved most in the world, he was around his dad, and he was tinkering. It made him feel close to his father and they had a bond because of that. He looked up to his father, wanted to be like his father and so wanted his approval. John loved his son and was proud of him but they never really talked much about things, how Alex was doing or anything else really other than just "shop talk". John, in short, was a nice man, but rather reserved when it came to showing affection. That was usually his mother's department.

He loved his mom too but she wasn't interested in any of that"tinkering stuff" and preferred to keep him up on his school studies. She knew that an education was important and that her son had a brilliant mind if he applied it just right and it was her job to make sure that he got an equal balance of all subjects and not just fixing things and tearing them apart. She did manage to make sure Alex knew he was loved though and would often encourage him and tell him he could do anything he set his mind on.

To Alex it was a great place to grow up. He sometimes wished he wasn't an only child though, because he wondered what that would be like to have brothers or sisters. His parent's couldn't have any more children after him so he resolved early on that this was just the way it was suppose to be. He had lots of friends from school that he would play with from time to time but there were two that he felt closer to than anyone. One was his friend Sarah, who lived down the street. She was his best friend. And then there was "Bikko"his dog. His dog was his shadow. It was a little sandy colored Scottish terrier mix that his parents gave to him when he was younger and the two were always together. Bikko was Alex's little buddy and would do anything to protect him. In fact Bikko would sleep at the foot of the bed and always had had one ear up, always alert and on always on watch.

Sarah Rogers lived two doors down and was his age and they had grownup together and been best friends since the first grade when Alex scared off some bullies that were picking on Sarah and trying to steal her lunch. They became best buds on that day and even when all the boys thought all the girls had "cooties" and vise versa, they never felt that about one another. Sarah was his buddy, his confidant, his sister and best friend and he could tell her all kinds of things that he couldn't tell his parents. She became his family away from home. She was the only that knew about the time Alex fixed his parent's DVD player that suddenly broke. He had it torn apart and put back together before his parents got back and found it in parts all over the living room floor. His parents' were never aware of that fact, and Alex never told them, but Sarah knew. Fact was Alex's parents wouldn't have approved of him just taking that upon himself, or trying to fix something on his own without his dad being present. To them, he was still too young even with his many talents. They would of gotten angry and felt he had disobeyed them in some strange way so he kept it a secret. In fact all the times he took things apart and put them back together again just to see how they worked and what was inside of them he did it in secret.And so far he had been lucky and not gotten caught.