All Too Familiar

Red And Blue Don't Make Indigo

(Author's note: I've been pretty busy the past week or two so I haven't been able to update the story. Sorry about that. Working on both Hiro and Tadashi casual cosplays so maybe that's my sorry excuse. I'll also be on holiday for about 2 weeks but will try to write in the plane or when I have free time and hopefully get one to two chapters up and running. Update: WOAH i've really dragged this for a whole week i'm sorry)

.......................................................................................................................................................................

"Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul."- Ivan Doig, The Whistling Season

When Cass heard the scream from the other end of the phone that unforgettable day, she assumed her sister had broke a nail again.

Who would have known she was pregnant.

Of course, a whole scream fest was initiated, earning jolts of shock and dirty looks from the customers patronizing the peaceful serenity of the Lucky Cat Cafe, but Cass was too overjoyed to notice. Nine months later and boom out comes the little bundle of joy. A few months before the arrival of baby Hamada the first, Cass and her sister attended gatherings, met up with old friends, many of whom had kids of their own, and years of experiencing told them everything in the house had to be baby-proofed.

"I'm telling you, David there is the pint-sized incarnation of the devil itself."

"I feed him pureed mashed fruits but he goes around his days as if he had consumes heaps and heaps of gummy bears and drank red bull instead of formula."

This led to many petrifying thoughts on how the Hamada bugger would grow up to become a godzilla-like tyrant, and Mrs Hamada was quick to pay a visit to every child department store she knew within a wide radius to find all kinds of baby-proof products known to mankind. Cupboard locks, foam table edge protectors, heck, even steel plated safety bars for the cot. You name it, she had it all. So everyone was fully prepared to welcome a screaming, kicking, blue-in-the-face and horribly out-of-control baby into the Hamada family.

No one expected a patient, obedient, angelic wide-eyed infant who just laid there staring at everyone in wide-eye wonder whilst trying to grab their pinkies with his tiny hands.

Tadashi Hamada was brought home a few days later, and his parents left him alone, assuming that the unusually quiet behaviour was just a passing stage of shock which would wear off sooner or later.

Two weeks in and Tadashi not only kept up the "act", but even started the attempt to crawl. Cass was pretty sure they had swapped babies at the hospital. Gradually, his parents began to accept (with joy, undoubtedly), that god had blessed them with an angel or whatever, which also made things much, much easier for them. (However, it did mean a hundred and fifty bucks wasted on all that baby proofing equipment.)

Whenever Cass came to visit on weekends, she watched as her older sister experimented with bowl after bowl of pureed spinach, organic cereals and other wonky concoctions to spoon into her infant's mouth. The television was never on, except when Sesame Street came on every day at 7 and Tadashi would blurt out the ABCs with Elmo or count numbers breezily. Numerous activity books were worked through with indefinite ease and by the age of three, all of his duplos were replaced with actual lego bricks due to his astounding ability to create literal colour blocked spaceships, five tower castles with moats and various masterpieces. Whatever the cause, her nephew was always eager to show her what he was capable of. Whether it was sheer luck, or the organic mush worked miracles (Cass wasn't sure which), Tadashi was a smart little rug rat and got to start school a year early.