Wilby Lake

By G!

There's a lake at Wilby Lake.

There's a town called Wilby Lake that used to be right next to Wilby Lake. Now, Wilby Lake is at the bottom of Wilby Lake. Because some years back, the St. Lawrence River got so high, the town built in the lowlands two kilometers away, flooded.

There’s rumored to be zombies in Wilby Lake; zombies of the inhabitants of the now underwater Wilby Lake.

There's a bus stop that stops right at the fringe of Wilby Lake, that bus stop has stopped there a long time ago, but busses don't stop there anymore.

Confusing, eh?

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” – Luke Jackson

People have always had trouble understanding me. It began I think when I was four years old, or maybe five, I can’t remember; it was sudden and totally uncalled for. As I was told, one day, I walked into the kitchen in the morning and told my mother I’d like pancakes for breakfast. My mother told me she just stared at me then because she couldn’t understand what I was talking about, and she asked me to repeat the sentence, I did, and she failed to understand what I said, again. I didn’t understand how my mother did not understand the sentence “I’d like pancakes for breakfast please”, I still don’t. It turned out to be, as she explained after she told me I had to get the pancakes myself from the pan for her to get what I was going at, that she did not understand the way I said “I’d like pancakes for breakfast please”. It seemed odd, and it has been so ever since.

It’s not that I don’t think properly, or that I have trouble forming comprehensible speech; the problem seems to be the fact that to everyone’s ears except my own…well, an example then, since I don’t even believe such nonsense myself: when I think “I was talking” and I say “I was talking” and to my own sound ears I hear “I was talking”, to other people (so they say), it would sound something along the lines of “Talked ised me.” If you didn’t understand that transition, neither did I and neither did the fifty or so speech therapists my well-to-do parents took me to who all exclaimed in horror at my horrid speech patterns (actually, they told us my speech lacked pattern, that was apparently the problem) which I did and do not feel I actually have. I was at a complete loss; it was clear to everyone that I have trouble speaking English properly, everyone that is, excluding me! I am the only person in this whole world I live in who does not have trouble understanding me, or rather, me speaking, but since people are society animals and talking is in the fundamental genes, talking weird makes communication a heck lot difficult, for everyone but me, that is. So here’s my conclusion: I understand my thoughts, I understand what comes out of my mouth in words because I hear it in my head as I’m quite everyone does in theirs, and nobody else understands what I say, and later, what I write. What may look and sound like “I have to go to the washroom” sounds like such incomprehensible syllable mash-up gibberish to other people I gave up trying to find out what other people are hearing of my words in kindergarten. I chose to speak as infrequent as humanly and communicatively possible.

All this happened before Simona was born, so everyone in the family took some time getting used to my apparently sudden and mysterious speech change except her. She listened to my so-called difficult speech growing up while I babysat her and thank heaven and earth she didn’t copy my speech and grow up to speak just like I do (or so they say I do). My grandmother was especially horrified to learn of my inability to communicate verbally with people, she had high hopes I would become a senator in the parliament, which would require a lot of public speaking chops. Well, when her hopes were dashed she had a heart attack soon after; she joined my grandfather, who I had never known in the Sims family plot down in the cemetery. My ever-supportive parents were quick to assure me I had nothing to do with the cause of my dear grandmother’s heart attack and ensuing death, though I’m quite sure if it weren’t for the extra large inheritance she left behind they’d loath me quite badly. Fortunately, the outcome of events was most well in my parent’s favor they forgave me for bearing such a fatal flaw (so they say), while I swear on my own grave in the future, I DON’T HAVE A SPEECH PROBLEM…well, depends who you trust more, the narrator or the characters.

‘Okay, so what do you do when you see a stop sign?’ Simona asks me.

‘That’s easy. I stop the car.’ I reply.

‘Did you mean you’d stop the car?’ She asks.

‘Yes.’ I clarify.

‘Next question, what do you do when you turn right at an intersection, that doesn’t have signal lights?’

‘I stop at the stop sign if there is one, I stop if there isn’t one anyways, I look right and left for pedestrians and incoming vehicles, and then I turn right.’

‘Um, can you…say that in a few sentences?’

‘Sure. First, I stop at the intersection. Second, I look for pedestrians and other cars. Third, I turn right.’

‘I think you forgot one technical detail.’

‘Hum, let me think here…oh yeah right, I have to flash the tail light, gee, always forget that part!’

‘Um, what do you mean by…turning car rear light bulb on slash off?’

‘Did I say that?’

‘It sounded like it.’

‘Geez! Okay, what I meant was I need to flash the lights at the rear side of the car, to signal to the car behind me that I am turning right.’

‘Okay, I get it. Let me write that down here…’ My sister keeps a notebook - or several for that matter - and records all of the gibberish I say that she can’t comprehend; the next time I say something along such lines, there’s the notebooks for reference.

 ‘How long do we still have until the exam?’ I ask; I never carry around a watch with me.

My sister checks her watch. ‘Oh my gosh! I think we went overtime!’

‘What’s the time?’

‘It’s already ten o clock. Don’t you have to be there by ten thirty?’

‘Holy darn, you’re right! I got to get going, wish me luck!’ I sailed out of the front doors in a matter of minutes, turned back in a great frenzy to blow Simona a kiss, and took off for the bus station as quickly as humanly possible. In that instant I looked back, I saw Simona standing on the porch, looking slightly confused. Well, I guess she didn’t get my good bye phrase. I didn’t have time to check if she is writing whatever I said down in the notebook – the vocabulary dictionary of Simcoe Sims, isn’t that just daisy?

It took me little more than no time to get to the bus station, just in time to see the bus leaving it. I ran after the bus all the while screaming at the summit of my lungs. The bus did not slow down in response, which it did not give, so I picked up a chunk of gravel off the road and hurled it at the bus in a fashion that might have impressed a shot put athlete. The gravel connected with the rear of the bus, shattering its tail light, and that action and result must have made considerable impact on the driver, because the bus grinded to a halt. I ran up to the sliding doors before the driver can exit and discover what damage I had inflicted on his bus and was let in.

‘What was that noise? Did you see? Did the exhaust backfire or something?’ The driver inquired as I entered.

‘Never mind that, take me to the driver’s school.’ I said, panting.

‘What’s that you say? I didn’t catch it.’

‘Never mind that.’ I said, and I fed a ticket into the slot and parted to the rear for a seat.