diaper dimension Done Adulting, Volume 1 (Now available on Amazon with a preview of Volume 2)

[kerry]

I like this psychiatrist; she seems to understand a lot about him already.

[YourFNF]

8 hours ago, Author_Alex said:

part of his brain would tell, “Don’t say that,” and the other part would respond, “Saying it anyway, Asshole” and ride away on a motorcycle purposefully throwing mud all over the first part.

 

It me....

I'm glad to see Jamie get some help...

I'm also relieved that so far that an appointment with a shrink in this universe isn't an ideologically biased cluster fuck...

[Alex Bridges]

1 hour ago, YourFNF said:

It me....

I'm glad to see Jamie get some help...

I'm also relieved that so far that an appointment with a shrink in this universe isn't an ideologically biased cluster fuck...

There’s nothing worse than a judgmental or dismissive therapist. You go in there with an open heart because you trust a person to help because it’s their job, and it hurts that much more when you get shot down. ? 

[Little_Mouse]

This is the first diaper dimension story with little's and bigs i really like to read. I like how the story is slowly building up. That you take the time and effort to unfold your characters. Love this story!

You are a very talented author Alex.

[WBDaddy]

4 hours ago, Author_Alex said:

There’s nothing worse than a judgmental or dismissive therapist. You go in there with an open heart because you trust a person to help because it’s their job, and it hurts that much more when you get shot down. ? 

My best experiences with therapists were when I walked in with a clear plan of what I wanted to accomplish and elucidated that plan in the first session.  My favorite therapist was a kid straight out of college.  She enjoyed working with me because I was motivated and focused, which made her job relatively easy.  In some ways it was kind of funny, because I could tell she found me intriguing, but I also knew that was because she probably dealt with 50 people over the course of a week that all just came in there to whine about life instead of engage in the kind of self-reflection that would effect change in their lives.  I was the unicorn of the bunch - someone who knew what was wrong in his life and wanted to fix it. 

[Sarah Penguin]

[Alex Bridges]

About 90 minutes ago, at 10:20PM, my doorbell rang. I looked out my peephole, and there was a fat kid with a platter of cupcakes. Fucking inexplicable. I didn't open the door.

__________________________________________________

Chapter 25, Part 2

 

 

“If it’s alright with you, I want to start with before you came here. That will help me understand your reaction to this world,” Mary said. She sat with tablet and stylus in hand. She was older than Rebecca, with rectangle glasses and the soft skin of a woman on the far side of middle age. Her voice to this point had been business-like, transactional. She was practiced in the art of her science, at making her patients know what she needed from them and then gently coaxing it from them.

 

Jamie lay on his back against the arm of the sofa, staring at the door to the waiting area. He could stare at the door silently for as long as she could stare at him over her tablet, or he could cooperate and make this as painless as possible. One thing he was determined to do was not to cry. Enough of that. Too many tears shed during and after a life that was over for him now, or at least behind a curtain for good.

 

“I know what you did for a living. What did you for fun?”

 

“For fun? I was sort of active when I wanted to be … I went to the beach a lot to swim … I went to the gym sometimes, when I cared to … I’d get into it for a few months and burn out on it and stop. I liked to tell people I was a hiker, but that sporadic; I’d go months without … I watched a lot of TV, binged a lot of the same shows over and over, just to have the background noise sometimes … I read a lot, but in the last few years I mostly read news; my attention span wasn’t what it used to be, and I’d have a hard time staying committed to a book, even one I liked … I can’t remember the last piece of fiction I read … I always wanted to do something creative like sing or act or play an instrument or paint or something, but it never seemed like I had time, or if I did that it would be too hard; ya know, like I wouldn’t be good at it right away, of course, and I’d get frustrated.”

 

“Nobody’s good at anything right away, right?”

 

“No, course not. Just, when you’re doing something for fun … it’s hard to have fun doing something you suck at.”

 

“Do you ever draw or color now?”

 

“Yeah. In a coloring book. Nothing original.”

 

“You read a lot.”

 

“I do. We don’t watch much TV at home, so I read a lot.”

 

“What do you read?”

 

“I guess you’d call it young adult fiction.”

 

“No regular fiction?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“No nonfiction or news?”

 

“No.”

 

“So the average workday for a year ago. What was your evening like?”

 

“I left work around 5:30 or 6. If I was staying fit at the time, I’d go to the gym and get home around 7:30 or 8. If I wasn’t, then I’d be home by 6:15 or 6:45 and have dinner and watch Netflix and surf on my computer. Sometimes I’d play video games, if there was one I liked playing out; I was picky about which games I bought.”

 

“And on the weekends?”

 

Jamie shrugged. “A long version of my weekday evenings. I’d usually get up and take a hot bath and read for longer than I meant to. Go run any errands. Go to the gym or beach, maybe have lunch or dinner out. A lot of time, though, well, really, I guess most of the time, I’d stay home all day. I‘d always make plans to go do something like hike or go swimming and then not go. And I’d feel guilty about that, felt like I was missing out on things, wasting my days.” He nodded his head toward his left shoulder in another shrug. “Eventually I told myself that it was my free time and that if I was doing what I wanted to in the moment then it wasn’t a waste of time.”

 

“You like hiking and swimming and things like that?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And you’d skip them anyway sometimes. Did you feel like you weren’t taking pleasure in the things you liked anymore?”

 

Jamie knew what she was getting at: anhedonia. “Yes. And yes, I was being treated for depression.”

 

“Do you feel depressed now?”

 

“Well … I’m not sure. Sometimes. If I’m busy or with someone, then no.”

 

“When you were describing your free time, you didn’t mention hanging out with friends.”

 

“Didn’t have any.”

 

“None?”

 

“I had long-distance friends I lost touch with. I had work friends, but I never asked them to do anything outside the office, and they never asked me.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I don’t know. I guess maybe we saw enough of each other during the day, or else we all just wanted to draw a line between work and home … I always thought it would be kind of awkward to ask, because you know they’re going to say yes just out of collegial courtesy … and then what if you found something about the other you didn’t like and had to see that person all the time and act normal? I mean, what’s even normal for colleagues to talk about outside work?”

 

“Did you have a hard time making friends, or did you not try, or both?”

 

“Both. I’m bad at social situations most of the time. Or at least think I am and then overanalyze everything. Takes all the fun out of it … and how do you try anyway? Growing up, all your friendships are organic, and then that stops unless you do make friend-friends with your coworkers. Trying to make friends in some random or even purposeful way seemed like too much work and not enough pay off. I didn’t think I’d make ay friends that way.”

 

Mary paused to take more notes before moving on. “About work. Tell me more about what you did.”

 

Jamie took a deep breath. They made it awful hard to put it behind him. Jamie figured his ability to be happy at times over the past weeks was precisely because he was too busy with other things to think back on it. What was wrong with that strategy? It was essentially what he intended when he left. “I was a social worker. I mostly worked with kids.”

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Child welfare.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I think you know.”

 

“Yeah, but I want to hear what you did, specifically.”

 

“A relative, a neighbor, a teacher, a friend’s parent, a cop, a doctor, a priest – whomever – reports a concern about a child being neglected or abused or just in a bad situation – that happens most often, whole family is in a bad situation, not abuse or neglect – and I check it out. Go through the guidelines, make an assessment, and if I find the report substantiated, then I try to fix the problem.”

 

“How?”

 

“Depends on what the problem is. Remove them from the home, or sometimes keep certain family members away. Get the family counseling or other services. Try to get them better housing, get on food assistance, get them medical care, get them job counseling. Work with the school to make sure the kid’s getting what he needs. Or work with the police to keep the kid out of trouble, or more often to get him out of trouble. If I do have to separate them from their family, try to place them with other relatives, or a foster parent, or as a last resort, a group home.” Group homes: Jamie shook his head. “Basically whatever I can do to make sure the kid is healthy, safe, and on a path that doesn’t lead to crime, addiction, prison or death.”

 

“Do you realize you just said all that in the present tense?” Jamie hadn’t.

 

“No … I see your point.”

 

“I saw in your file that your job had a lot to do with why you decided to come here. Can you tell me more about that?”

 

This time Jamie didn’t respond right away. It always came back to this. Well, fine, Jamie thought, out with it. “I got tired of failing at my job and seeing people I was responsible for get hurt. Even when I got a kid out of a bad situation, I didn’t get ‘em far. They’re still poor and still stuck in a high-crime neighborhood and still having to choose between life, if they’re lucky, driving a shuttle at the airport or pushing a broom, or crime. And that’s if they even get that far. I had a client who was shot on the street walking home; someone killed him to steal his cell phone. I had a kid die of an asthma attack because his parents couldn’t afford an inhaler after they got kicked off Medicaid and it took too long for the ambulance to get there from the good side of town. I had one of my clients murder another of my clients over an argument, and they were friends. I don’t even know how many ended up in jail or dead after they aged out. I had girls who were prostituting themselves for drugs. I had 12 year old alcoholics. I had pregnant teens. Every which kind of mental illness you can think of compounded by poverty and every other problem they had. Kids who the court returned to their parents only for the parents to beat on them some more or worse. Kids going to jail. Kids getting beaten by the cops or a rival gang. Kids suspended or expelled from school for having a weapon or drugs, and probably one out of every three of those, it was the parent who gave it to them. Kids just so angry they want to fight the world; there’s no room for learning or maturing or being loved or feeling loved when you’re that angry ... and a lot of them were right to be angry.”

 

Jamie took a breath and slowed down, thinking back on all of it. His eyes fell, and he breathed slowly. “Those were just the worst parts. Ya know, like they stand out, but they were rare. Those were … god, they were so fucking hard, but it was the shit that passed for good that … that’s what burned me out. All the work I’d do getting a kid in a good situation, making sure he had what needed, that he stayed on the right path – success was just not falling into gang life or getting arrested or getting killed. Success was the kid graduating high school, though that wasn’t a must-have to count a case as a success, and then getting a job. Any job. Burger flipper, floor sweeper, bus driver, ticket taker, luggage handler, concessionaire at the ballpark. Success was getting them through high school, graduates or not sometimes, without them getting arrested, killed or addicted, so they could transition from a childhood of poverty into an adulthood of poverty or near-poverty. That’s what’s open to kids from poor backgrounds and yes, usually of certain complexions. And fuck if everybody doesn’t ignore that last part, as if it’s just the natural state of things that nine out of ten janitors in any city are the same color as that city’s largest racial minority. Go to LA, and it’s Hispanic people cleaning the hotel toilets; go to Chicago, it’s African-Americans. This whole sprawling underclass that’s just accepted as the norm.

 

“There’s no winning. I had less than ten percent of my kids go to any kind of post-secondary education. Trade school, community college, college. Most of them didn’t make it through their first year. A-students in the shit schools they came from, and not at all prepared for actual learning.

 

“Best outcome was the military, provided they didn’t get wounded or killed. Hard to fail out of that, and it positioned best for a better life, but only if they survived. All but one did, but what kind of society is that? Having to choose between the street or life of working your ass off and still being poor or maybe getting killed or maimed or PTSD. Don’t even list climbing into the middle class as an option; might as well be a myth for how often that actually happens.

 

“And hardly anyone gives a damn. Social workers, teachers, a handful of cops, some do-gooders. Most everyone else ignores it; even if they acknowledge it exists, they do nothing or next to nothing to change it. And worse, half of them that know it blame the kids, say they should work harder, say the parents should get off welfare, and just to help, they’ll take welfare away. Plunge the kid deeper into poverty just because they don’t like an adult is also getting welfare. And then want to throw the key away when a kid starts stealing or dealing, like they wouldn’t do the same fucking thing if they grew up in those environments and with those same chances in life. Fuck; society just turns racist, maniac cops fucking loose so long as one juror or judge or prosecutor can say ‘he feared for his life’ with a straight fucking face.”

 

Jamie rubbed his face and eyes. “So I couldn’t take it anymore. Failing even when I succeeded, and watching all that happen again and again. … You become a party to it, when you make yourself a part of the system. It ends up being your fault, too.” Jamie sat there silent.

 

“Some people would call you a hero for trying.”

 

With his eyes closed and jaw tight, Jamie answered, “Do you have any idea what a shit feeling it is to be called that when you failed and the consequence for that failure is someone gets hurt or hurts themselves or just ends up in another cycle of generational poverty and discrimination?”

 

Mary hadn’t thought of that. People bandied the word ‘hero’ around in Itali, too. She never considered that being called a hero could make someone feel worse, even awful. “So why didn’t you just walk away and stay in that world?”

 

“Couldn’t. I couldn’t be so close to it, literally, and stay away. Couldn’t live with myself if I became one of the people who just ignore it. Hard enough failing all my kids and abandoning them. I … I needed distance, I guess … and a life so different it doesn’t seem … doesn’t seem like I’m surrounded by it. I know it’s bullshit, but … I guess I feel like my kids are not in this world, therefore I’m not ignoring them. I know that’s wrong. I know they still exist.”

 

“Jamie, why was all of this your responsibility to fix?”

 

“Because I took the job … No, because if a few people hadn’t stepped up for me, I would have ended up like most of my kids. I tried to pay it forward. I took the job.”

 

“Fair enough. But why is it you take it so personally? Obviously, not all of your colleagues feel like they’ve failed because they couldn’t fix everything … and surely some left the job without feeling like they’d abandoned anyone. Why isn’t that you?”

 

“Different perspectives.”

 

“Because you were a foster kid?”

 

“That and just … they can forgive themselves for their failure … and that’s assuming they even think it’s their failure.”

 

“You said yourself these problems are systemic, in so many words. Why is it the individual social worker who needs to ask forgiveness? Or at least, why do you think you do?”

 

Jamie didn’t have a ready reply. He didn’t even have a thought process for a reply. He just lay there with his mind clear, his eyes not focused on anything. No awkward silence was going to give him an answer, nor could he reason one out. He knew it wasn’t reasonable; he felt that way nonetheless. There’s no telling yourself not to feel a certain way. You may get over the feeling, or the feeling can be replaced by another, but you can’t reason your way out of a feeling. That’s why they call it a feeling and not an opinion. Sometimes, though, if you wait patiently, the clarity you need just comes on its own, and the thoughts you couldn’t express on purpose express themselves.

 

Jamie started talking again without putting much deliberate thought into his words. They just came. “You have violent people here?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“We did, too. Always something in the news, no matter where you live, right? Some guy murders someone over a drug debt. I can forgive him; maybe he goes to prison, maybe he doesn’t, but I can forgive him because I don’t think he’s necessarily an evil person or beyond redemption. Does that make sense?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“But someone … hurts someone defenseless, hurts his girlfriend, someone …” He swallowed hard. “Hurts a kid. I can’t …” His eyes flashed, and he choked on the very thought. “I can’t forgive that person. Lot of reasons other than evil someone does that. Doesn’t matter. I can’t forgive it. I don’t want to. Maybe that person is beyond redemption or not …” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve a chance at redemption. Least, I won’t give it to him …” Jamie’s forehead knotted and his lips grew thin; his eyes were looking somewhere not in the room. “Fuck him.” He spat the words out.

 

“Jamie, did someone hurt you, when you were young?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“Do you think that’s why you feel so strongly about it?”

 

Jamie didn’t hesitate. “Nope. I forgave those people. They … they weren’t worth hating. They don’t get to have me spend the energy on them that it takes to hate.”

 

“Why then?”

 

“Because … I forgave the people who hurt me because that’s what was best for me. I even meant it, sometimes. But what’s best for these kids, my kids … what’s best for them is that I hate those … that I hate those people, so there’s no mistaking whose side I’m on … and so I fight for my kids with everything. No sympathy for the other side. Empathy, maybe, but no sympathy.”

 

“And did you? Fight for them?”

 

Jamie exhaled as tears came to his eyes. “Fuck yeah, I did. For all of ‘em. Not just the ones who were being hurt but all of ‘em, the ones who needed a little help to get by and the ones who needed saving, from themselves, from others. Fought like god’s own army, or at least I tried.”

 

“And yet you feel guilty.”

 

“I didn’t always win, did I? I don’t even think I won half … The abuse cases were easy by comparison; not always easy to prove, but if you did, you could lock those people up. It’s the other ones. Neglect cases where the parent can barely take of themselves; that’s not a monster, just a pity case … Kids getting into trouble; kids who are hungry every day; kids getting pulled into gangs; kids whose only problem is they’re poor or live in the wrong neighborhood; selling drugs, taking drug, drinking; violence. A kid like that isn’t a kid to police; shit, a kid in the vicinity of that isn’t a kid to police … Trying to save ‘em before they get murdered or end up in jail. Just trying to get ‘em out of school and into the workforce. And so many of those kids … Five; five might as well be a million. Like trying to hold back five oceans that are gonna crash on these kids and there’s just one of me.”

 

“Doesn’t trying count for something?”

 

“How much difference is there between someone who hurts a kid and someone who fails to protect a kid? Whether he tried or not? … You fail; you enable all the other shit that comes at the kid, whether it’s the abusive parent or the poverty what’s gonna swallow her like it swallowed her parents. Kid still gets hurt. Kid still gets lost in the shuffle. You tell them they can count on you … when it turns out they can’t, that hurts them, too … I hurt them, too … and then I left and came here, even after telling … I don’t know how many, but telling them I was always going to there. Just the latest person to lie to them and abandon them.”

 

Mary looked down at Jamie. He had that thousand-yard stare; she wondered what he was seeing right then. Maybe nothing. Jamie was case-reportable, she thought, easily no other little like him and with his experiences and problems in Itali. Others had other kinds of suffering. The circumstances behind his arrival and his decision to not be regressed or even have some memories removed just made Jamie unique. “Okay. I think that’s enough for today, unless there something else you want to talk about.”

 

Jamie shook his head. He didn’t have more to say that day.

 

“Do you want to take a minute, or …”

 

“No, I’m good.” It’s scarier when someone with that much pain is calm. You never know how close to an edge they are or how they might let those emotions out.

 

“Okay.” Mary stood, and Jamie stood after her. “I’m going to ask you to wait in the waiting area while I talk to Amanda and your mom. Okay?”

 

Jamie just nodded and opened the door, walking into the outer room. Amanda and Becky stood and smiled gently.

 

“How’d it go?”

 

“Fine. Your turn, I guess,” Jamie responded with a simple smile, as though he didn’t take this all that seriously, that learning to live with it all was his best chance, so why not talk about it? And why take talking about it all that seriously?

 

“Becky and Amanda,” Mary said, “Jamie is going to wait out here, if that’s alright with you, while we talk now.”

 

When they were seated on either side of her desk, Mary put on her professional smile and deliberately sounded upbeat to start the conversation. “That is one complicated little you guys got there.”

 

“Ya think,” Amanda joked.

 

Mary chuckled. “One of you is rubbing off on the other. Jamie has some wonderful qualities, and I’m sure you’ve noticed them. He’s passionate. He’s empathetic. He’s humble. He doesn’t judge people too harshly. He has a strong moral code. Those are all such great things, things that should be encouraged.

 

Where he seems to be running into trouble is believing it’s his responsibility to fix things he couldn’t possibly fix. He sets himself up for failure in that way. It’s a collision of all those good qualities taken to an extreme and then not applied to himself.”

 

“I’m not sure I understand,” Rebecca replied.

 

“Jamie has a lot of empathy, except for himself. He doesn’t judge other people harshly, but he judges himself harshly, and by standards no one could meet and no one would reasonably hold someone else to. That strong moral code and his passion are partly why. He sees a problem, he believes he must fix it, and whether it was fixable doesn’t matter to him. He does or he doesn’t, and because the problems he was engaged in where he comes from were so big, there was virtually no way for him to walk feeling like he fixed anything, even when he succeeded by the standards of his profession. Does that make more sense?”

 

“Yes. We’ve known all along his work drove him here. That and his childhood,” Amanda said.

 

“So basically his whole life,” Becky frowned.

 

“And we know he wanted to leave there; he didn’t really want to come here, per se,” Amanda finished.

 

“In our calls, you said he has anger outbursts. What are those usually over?”

 

“People treating him like he’s regressed. Or just frustration boiling over, but that’s really rare.”

 

“How does he feel afterward?”

 

“If it’s over someone treating him poorly, he stays mad about it. He’s getting better at controlling those outbursts and ignoring those people, and at not letting it get to him in the first place, but you can tell it still does sometimes. When he just loses his temper, though, when he calms down he’s ashamed.”

 

“That makes sense based on what he just told me. He said he has a difficult time forgiving people who can’t defend themselves, and that’s him now. And realizing that’s him probably drives a lot of that frustration. And when he lets out those negative emotions, then he thinks he’s in the wrong and has a hard time forgiving himself,” Mary explained. She pondered silently for a moment.

 

She began again, “Bottom line is he’s angry at himself. He’s angry at others, but anger turned outward stays anger. Anger turned inward is depression.”

 

Becky was getting irritated, not at Mary but in feeling like they’d been going in circles since Amanda opened his file. “We’ve known that. It’s just … he’s such a sweet and kind person. I …” Rebecca put her forehead in her hand and her elbow on her knee, looking at the floor in front of her chair. “I don’t understand how he can’t see it. How he can be angry with himself.”

 

Amanda interjected. “And we don’t want to give you the wrong impression. He’s happy, at least on the outside, most of the time now. Things were harder at first, but he’s had very few outbursts since the first couple weeks; he tends to get more quiet and brooding than outwardly angry. He’s had, I don’t know, maybe two or three episodes where his frustration boiled over. I mean, is he making progress or not?”

 

Mary smiled to reassure them, “Absolutely he is. I suspect, though, that’s he making more progress in adjusting to his new environment – knowing what to expect and so having fewer big emotions, and learning to control those big emotions he does have better. But I don’t think he’s making much progress with the issues that led him here.”

 

“Guilt, right,” Becky asked. “He feels guilty for having left those kids behind, but that doesn’t even make sense. He left because he felt guilty for leaving?”

 

Mary nodded in sympathy. “It’s a little more complex that guilt. He feels guilty because he let them down, both by not being able to solve their problems and also, now, because he left. More problematic than the guilt over leaving, however, is that he sees letting someone down as being the being the same as purposefully hurting someone.

 

That’s not uncommon in professions like his. It’s someone who empathizes too much with the people he needs to help; he loses the critical distance. There’s no way that person doesn’t burn out. What concerns me is how calm he is about it. That usually means someone has made a decision.”

 

Amanda spoke up, “He wasn’t calm about it when he got here. He was … he was a wreck. He didn’t just cry. I mean … he sobbed, full body, clinging to me, shaking all over. He still cries maybe kinda easily for an unregessed little, and we did have an incident a few nights ago where he got very upset over something, but that’s all become rare. We thought he was getting better.”

 

“I think he’s learning to live with it,” Mary replied.

 

“And that’s a bad thing?”

 

“Yes. If he had done something wrong, by all means, learn to live with it. But he didn’t do anything wrong. If he continues thinking he did, it will hang over him forever, and he’ll probably never be happy with himself or fully embrace this or any life.”

 

“What do you think he decided,” Becky asked, her mind thinking of all the worst possible answers.

 

“That because he’s equivalent in his mind to the people who hurt kids on purpose, that he may not be redeemable, and that even if he is, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”

 

“How do we help him?”

 

“We have teach him that he does deserve forgiveness. By showing him all the good he does in the world. But he’ll only accept that if he’s trusts us enough to believe we’re not just saying it. Just saying it will make it worse.

 

We have to show it, over and over, and he needs to see it from more than just the two of you. You guys are on the right track: if he can trust you enough to let himself depend on you for anything, he’ll trust you on this. That’s the hardest thing for him to depend on others for and to accept from them, praise and forgo. Then, maybe, if we can get him to at least accept forgiveness from others we can prove to him one day that there’s nothing to forgive. Or if not that, then that he is forgiven, can forgive himself, and move on.”

 

Becky absorbed that and asked, “How do we show it?”

 

“Two ways. The first is praise. When he does something nice or kind or anything that shows what a sweet person he is, always call it out for him. To him, those are things he’s supposed to do, so doing them doesn’t count. Make sure he recognizes when he’s being those things, because he doesn’t give himself credit for them.

 

The second is love. People worth loving are worth forgiving. Every day, make sure he knows he’s loved, and by as many people as possible. A big, loving, social circle.”

 

That seemed too easy, or at least sounded like it. Mary saw that reaction and added, “And we’ll continue to work in here. This is where the heaviest emotional lifting will get done. He’s stuck in these negative feedback loops. We call them cognitive distortions. These are errors in his thinking: he sees what he thinks are negatives about himself – which I don’t think are negatives at all – and his mind magnifies them and makes them even worse. At the same time, he ignores the good things about himself. What he and I are going to work on, and what we’ll eventually need your help with too, is to break him out of those distorted thought patterns and replace them with positive patterns and coping skills.”

 

Becky sat back in her chair. Amanda glanced from her mom back to Mary and quipped, “So you’re saying this is gonna take a while.”

[Alex Bridges]

On 3/22/2019 at 8:26 AM, Galdamax said:

First time posting, but felt like had too. Loving this story, cant wait to see how Jamie manages day care, feel like a big character event for him. 

 

Pacing of the story is great. It dosnt feel like your rushing to tell us what happens. I think that is keeping me reading more than any thing else. Easy to sink into the world and go along with it.

 

As a side I usually have not enjoyed this setting for stories. You changed my mind

I didn’t like the dimension either. That’s what inspire me to write this.

[WBDaddy]

1 hour ago, Author_Alex said:

Becky sat back in her chair. Amanda glanced from her mom back to Mary and quipped, “So you’re saying this is gonna take a while.”

 

That was intense.  Visceral, almost. 

As I read it, I considered the old adage, "We write what we know".  It makes me wonder - are you the therapist to the social worker, or are you the social worker?  Because that's way too accurate on both sides of that equation to have been googled up and still feel that REAL, you know what I mean?

Of course, I say that having been, in a past life, a transcriptionist to a psych who did evals for the state, so my knowledge of the subject is still somewhat secondhand, but it's just too spot on in every facet...

[Alex Bridges]

7 hours ago, WBDaddy said:

 

That was intense.  Visceral, almost. 

As I read it, I considered the old adage, "We write what we know".  It makes me wonder - are you the therapist to the social worker, or are you the social worker?  Because that's way too accurate on both sides of that equation to have been googled up and still feel that REAL, you know what I mean?

Of course, I say that having been, in a past life, a transcriptionist to a psych who did evals for the state, so my knowledge of the subject is still somewhat secondhand, but it's just too spot on in every facet...

I do write based on what I know. Jamie and I have some similar perspectives, needs, behaviors, idiosyncrasies, and values. I don’t like compliments, I’m socially awkward outside of professional situations (and sometimes in them), I’m passionate about certain issues, and I’m a deep thinker on what it means to live an upright life and how to actually live one. I at least like to think I am kind and a lot sweeter and more sensitive than anyone not very close to me knows. I try to be generous with the benefit of the doubt when thinking about why people say and do the things they say and do, and I try not to judge too often or too harshly.

Unlike Jamie, I’m not so near a saint as he is, nor do I carry around the guilt, in quantity or kind, that he does. I do find it easier to forgive others than myself, but I’m not crippled by it like Jamie is.

No comment on the professional bit.

 

[Jayme]

Just wow... I have lost count on the times that Jamie reminds me of myself. In the 25 chapters so far I could see myself in his shoes. I Love this story and can't wait to read the next chapter. Thank you so much for posting this.

[YourFNF]

God damn...

I relate to Jamie on so many levels... It's rare that I can connect with a male protag like this...

Like fuck

#tooreal

@Author_Alex

[Alex Bridges]

42 minutes ago, YourFNF said:

God damn...

I relate to Jamie on so many levels... It's rare that I can connect with a male protag like this...

Like fuck

#tooreal

@Author_Alex

You’re a very sweet person.

[Alex Bridges]

2 hours ago, Author_Alex said:

I do write based on what I know. Jamie and I have some similar perspectives, needs, behaviors, idiosyncrasies, and values. I don’t like compliments, I’m socially awkward outside of professional situations (and sometimes in them), I’m passionate about certain issues, and I’m a deep thinker on what it means to live an upright life and how to actually live one. I at least like to think I am kind and a lot sweeter and more sensitive than anyone not very close to me knows. I try to be generous with the benefit of the doubt when thinking about why people say and do the things they say and do, and I try not to judge too often or too harshly.

Unlike Jamie, I’m not so near a saint as he is, nor do I carry around the guilt, in quantity or kind, that he does. I do find it easier to forgive others than myself, but I’m not crippled by it like Jamie is.

No comment on the professional bit.

 

There’s a blank spot in my memory where I can’t remember if this man down the street ever did anything to me. He did it to his sons and to a neighbor. I don’t know if Jamie and I have that in common or not. I grew up in a healthy, loving home.

I remember that man’s younger son was about my age. He wasn’t fun to play with. Sometimes he’d come over to our house and leave within five minutes; sometimes he wouldn’t even cross the threshold. Looking back I know why. I was too young to know what it meant, but I wish to god I could go back. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to go back and make it right.

Another time, I got in a tussle with that kid’s older brother, and he bloodied my nose. I can still hear that man shouting at his son with me standing in their kitchen with a wet towel on my face. I don’t know what happened after I went home. I don’t remember the fight; just the after. Hate to think on what happened after I left, if anything.  

My brother punched the kid back when he found out. I didn’t like that. It wasn’t satisfying. I felt bad about it. 

I was maybe 8. The older kid and my brother would have been 13. I don’t think my parents ever thought much on it, which just makes them average; not good or bad, just average.

I’d like to think that if I had been in my parents’ shoes I’d have recognized the signs, like that kid being too nervous to leave his house, and that I’d have had the courage to ask the kid what was going on, call social services. 

I tend to think I’d have done what almost everybody does when there’s no obvious sign of abuse: decide it’s not my business, that it wasn’t right of me to pry into other people’s lives, that siccing social services on a family is out of line if you can’t prove it.

That’s reality. We fantasize about all the injustices we would stop, the forces we’d stand against. But we’re just average people, most of us. We’d have done the average thing. 

I was a child. I didn’t know to look for signs or what they meant if I had seen them. I guess I’m blameless, but damn if I don’t feel like shit about it, thinking back.

Got me thinking about A Christmas Carol again, and what Jacob Marley said: “‘Business!' Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

It’s not people’s job to prove anything. If you think something is amiss, call the authorities. If you ever doubt whether it’s the right thing to do, ask yourself, what would feel worse: knowing you put a family through something hard but survivable, or knowing you could have saved a kid who needed saving and didn’t.

[Sarah Penguin]

awww poor jaime

[Little_Mouse]

Hope they can help Jamie get healed and learn to love himself so he can make peace with his feelings of guilt.

[the diaper mike]

 Oh my God the Deep emotion and this is a roller coaster ride in a cliffhanger at that

[Alex Bridges]

And on the lighter side ...

__________________________________________

Chapter 25 Part 3

 

Back in the car, Amanda sat next to Jamie so she could talk to him. Becky turned the radio off so she could hear and be heard.

 

“How ya feeling, buddy?”

 

“Fine.” Really, he was. No breakthroughs or emotional epiphanies, nothing he didn’t already not on some level know already. Amanda looked skeptical. “Really. Nothing new today.”

 

Amanda’s face soften and she put her hand on his knee. “Alright. You know you don’t have to talk about what you discuss with Mary with anyone, even us, unless you want to, right?”

“I know.” Jamie couldn’t remember the details of what he’d said anyway. He knew the narrative, but if he’d had to try to reproduce his own words, he’d come up with semi-accurate paraphrasing at best.

 

Amanda wasn’t so sure she liked what had just happened. Jamie had been smiling and happy just yesterday, and now he looked closed off and miserable. She understood it was a process, but what was the point if he had to be made unhappy long-term when he could feel at least somewhat happy, if not wholly so, without therapy? Maybe Jamie had a right to just learn to live with it. She wished they weren’t in the car so that she could do the one thing she knew always made him feel better: hold him.

 

“Since we all have the afternoon free, Jamie, we thought we’d go to the zoo and meet Laurie and Danny. How does that sound?”

 

Jamie had mixed feelings about zoos. He liked animals, but he didn’t like to see them in cages. He hadn’t been to a zoo back home in ages. But he was curious to see what animals they had here, and he hadn’t seen Danny or Laurie since his arrival party.

 

It was starting to bother Jamie a bit that he so rarely saw any men. Jamie assumed it was due to old fashioned gender roles. Single men didn’t seem to want littles; they didn’t go into caring professions like little day care; as far as he knew, they didn’t become little therapists. Jamie loved spending time with all the women in his life, and he never felt out place as a Little boy, but he missed talking to other guys, and he liked Danny. Something about him made him want to spend more time with him, sort of like a little brother wants to tag along with his big brother.

 

“Sounds good,” Jamie answered, sounding in earnest as he actually was. “Where’s the zoo?”

 

“It’s in Wood’s Park. That’s the main park where we live, where the art and history museum are, the science center, the city theatre, those kinds of things.” So an entirely new place. Jamie watched new scenery outside the window, or what he could see of it. Just the normal things on a highway passing from a suburban area and into an urban one.

 

“What’s that,” Jamie asked, pointing. Through the windshield he saw a statue rising between buildings at least five miles away. It shone in the sunlight.

 

“That’s Solea,” Becky answered, “There used to be a stone version of him there, and it broke apart in an earthquake. That’s been there for about 100 years. It’s on the harbor front.”

 

“When did original one collapse?”

 

“A few thousand years ago?”

 

Jamie considered that. “How old is Itali?”

 

Becky and Amanda didn’t know the answer. People had lived there since there were people. “Um, I guess a couple thousand years before the statue fell down.”

 

“Wow.”

 

“Is that a long time where you’re from?”

 

“Very. Humans didn’t start living in settled communities until 5,000 years ago. They couldn’t build anything like that for probably two thousand more … doesn’t seem that long when you think about it.”

 

After a minute of silence, Amanda glanced at her phone and leaned over to whisper to Jamie, “If you need to go, now would be a good time. You’re soaked anyway, right?” He was, enough that he felt squishy. Sighing and looking away, Jamie did what he needed to. The confined space of the car didn’t help.

 

Fortunately, they pulled off the highway a few minutes later and made a left across the overpass, directly into the park. Urban parks are so different from their surroundings, you could forget you were in a city at all. The road split into four directions, two through woods and two falling across opposite sides of the hill Jamie didn’t realize they were even on, past picnic pavilions and sign posts for the different things in the park.

 

The followed one of the roads, and at a corner a large wall made to look like a rock stood out, impossible to miss for its size. Jamie could only imagine the size of the animals a wall like that must have been built to contain. If the trees were an indication, big. Jamie hadn’t never been in a redwood forest, but he didn’t think those were as large and these, and they were everywhere.

 

Rather than park in the lot, Becky parked on the street since it was free. She got out and went to the back to get their things while Amanda got Jamie out of his car seat. “We can do this in the back or in the park. Up to you.” She unbuckled him and lifted him out of his seat, which she saw was wet. “Actually, we have to do this in the car. Sorry.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You leaked. It’s not a big deal.” Easy for her to say, Jamie thought. She wasn’t about to worse than nude in front of anyone passing by. Jamie now felt the cool wetness on the backs of his legs. He followed Amanda around to the back. Becky had heard the exchange and had started setting out what they’d need. Jamie stood there blushing.

 

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll take care of it.”

 

“Fine by me,” Becky laughed, though she also felt she wasn’t getting many of these personal moments with Jamie. She knew he preferred Amanda to do this, and she wasn’t sure why or what difference it made. She was a bit put out by it.

 

Amanda lifted Jamie into the back, and he managed to lay back on the changing mat without sitting first. Amanda took a black cloth from the corner near the seat and unsnapped a clasp to unfurl it. She found two loops at either end and put them over two hooks on the inside of the frame of the gate, blocking the view of passersby.

 

“See? A little privacy.” She got Jamie’s pants off and discovered his onesie was wet as well. “I’m sorry, Jamie, we should have gotten you changed before we left.”

 

“It’s okay,” he sighed. He’d either be back here anyway or uncomfortably holding it. Jamie wasn’t sure why his need to go was more urgent but figured it had something to do with little food. So that ruled out little food having opiates in it.

 

Amanda got him cleaned up. From the other side of the curtain they heard a woman’s voice. “Those are becoming so popular now. I honestly don’t get it. What does a little care about being seen getting her diaper changed?”

 

Rebecca heard it, too. The two women were walking side by side, and didn’t seem to think much of commenting on Becky’s purchase right in front of her.

 

“A good Big mom cares on her behalf,” Becky said.

 

The woman who spoke gave her a not unkind look, while the one who hadn’t spoken yet added, “I like it. If a little doesn’t care who looks at them, I still care what I have to look at.”

 

“Thank you,” Becky replied, “It’s also good for naps. It blocks the entire back when it’s hung up all the way.”

 

“Clever.” The two women went on their way.

 

 

Amanda wondered what Jamie thought of that exchange. He hadn’t changed his neutral expression. When she had him in a clean diaper, Amanda said, “Let’s see what outfit we have in the bag for you.” She rummaged around, found something, and smiled coyly.

 

“What,” Jamie asked.

 

“It’s your favorite puppy shirt,” Amanda sang, pulling out the shirt with baby bear on it. She tossed the shirt so it landed over his eyes and went to work tickling his chest and ribs and belly and underarms and feet while he writhed and laughed and tried to get away, squealing with equal parts delight and pleading.

 

“What are you guys doing in there,” Becky asked, knowing exactly what they were doing.

 

“Jamie’s tickling himself again, Mom. Didn’t even think that was possible.” Jamie lay mostly off the changing mat panting with tears in his eyes. He hated and loved when she did that. “And for real this time.” She helped him sit up, and he put on his own shirt while she found some shorts for him in the diaper bag, plus his sunglasses and a hat.

 

“One more thing,” Amanda said, taking some sunblock from the bag and rubbing it on the parts of Jamie exposed to the sun, especially the tops of his legs. He then quickly applied some to herself. “Hey, Mom,” she said, sticking a hand out from behind the curtain.

 

“Oh! Thanks a bunch. I forgot.”

 

Amanda stood Jamie up. He thought she was just helping him down, but she put her arms around him and kissed him on the neck.

 

Jamie liked it, of course, but he didn’t need it. “Really, Manda,” he said as he stroked her hair, “I’m fine. Promise.”

 

“I know. But sometimes I need a hug, too.” She let him go, took the curtain down, grabbed the diaper bag, and helped him down.

 

Her hand was on the gate when Jamie said, “Um, Manda?” He pointed to the rolled up diaper.

 

“Oh!” Amanda laughed. “Thank god one of us remembered. Nothing worse than leaving one of those in the car on a sunny day. Ha!” Stashed the diaper bag under the stroller and took the diaper over to a trash can, saying a quick prayer of gratitude and strength for sanitation workers.

 

“There’s a lot of walking today, Jamie. You can hop in and out of the stroller whenever you want.” Jamie opted to walk to the entrance at least, and the trio walked down the wide sidewalk. The walked under a sculpture of two dolphins touching noses and through a turnstile.

 

“No tickets?”

 

“Nope. Our zoo is free. If you don’t count taxes.”

 

A large fountain with a pool under it was about fifty meters from the entrance, with the flow of people going around it in two different directions. Danny and Laurie were sitting on the edge of the pool and waved when they spotted the trio. When they drew nearer, Danny stood up and declared, “It’s the Jamester,” like he was announcing the main act at a rock concert, and knelt down with his palm out. Jamie slapped his palm, and Danny moved it. “Up high.” Jamie smiled and gave him his high five. He did that with young kids back home, trying to get them to warm to him. It worked on the youngest, but stopped around age 9.

 

Laurie smiled and waved rather than emulate her husband’s antics. Danny stood up and gave Becky a hug, a smidge longer than just a greeting. “How you feeling, Beck?”

 

Becky returned the hug. She was his big sister, but ever since he was taller than her their relationship leveled, and he gave her as much guidance and support as she did him. “Oh,” she answered, betraying some stress she didn’t share at home, “I’m ready for summer again, and it’s only been a week.”

 

Danny let laughed and released her, but kept her wrists in his hands. “You’ve said that every year since you started teaching. And before that as a student.”

 

“Jealousy, is what you’re feeling right now, Daniel Webb, Systems Analyst.”

 

He let go of her wrists. “That’s ‘Dr. Daniel Webb, Systems Designer.”

 

Laurie spoke up, “Have I ever told you guys how weird I thought your relationship was when we first met.” Amanda choked on a laugh and turned red.

 

“A few times, yeah,” Danny smiled.

 

“Then I met Dana and it all made sense.” She smiled and looked down at Jamie. “I heard all about your encounter with her. Any thoughts to share?”

 

Jamie didn’t need to think on that one. “She’s a cu … she’s careless with people’s feelings,” he caught himself. Glad I’m not the only one to call her that, Lauren thought.

 

Danny put his arm around his sister and wife, then nodded toward Amanda and Jamie. “I think we have all the family we need right here.” He meant it, but he also wanted to put a stop to discussion of his mother, for all their sake’s but especially Becky’s.

 

“Jamie, wuddya think? Mammals or reptiles first?” In solidarity with his own mammalian class, Jamie chose mammals.

 

Jamie imagined this is what it felt like before pictures and books when a person saw an animal for the very first time. No one could dream up the variety, the colors, the abilities, the proportions, the specializations, the way nature had shaped each one to near perfectly fit its environment. All that was more impressive than the sheer size of some of them. No one could design them all. Jamie asked a lot of “What’s that” questions, and when he couldn’t see, Daniel put him on his shoulders.

 

Not every animal was new to him, though. They went into the ape house, and Jamie watched the silverback gorilla sitting with his back against the glass watching his extended family climb, sleep, groom, and play. Jamie loved gorillas growing up; gentle, yet a mighty force when roused to protect its family. He liked to see them, but he hated to see them there. They deserved to be wherever home was for them, safe and free in their forest. He tapped the glass slightly and put his palm against.

 

“Hey Manda?” She knelt down.

 

“Yeah, buddy?”

 

“Are they endangered here?”

 

“No. Far from it. No one would hurt a gorilla.”

 

“Good.” He left his palm there for another second before taking it away and continuing down the path back into the sun shine. The path wound around the building and gave them a view of an open pen where more apes played and enjoyed the sun and snoozed in the trees. Daniel picked him up for a better view.

 

Leaning out a little to look down against the wall, Jamie saw something moving mostly upright. At first, he thought it was a zookeeper, but then he realized it was another animal. Something about it intrigued him, and he kept watching until it moved far enough away and turned to the side.

 

“What do you call that one?”

 

“The tall one? It’s called an ‘allpamell.’ You don’t have those where you’re from?”

 

“Um, sort of. They’re supposed to be a myth, not really exist.”

 

“Maybe they went extinct a long time ago and endured as a legend. What do you call them?”

 

“Maybe. We call it a ‘sasquatch.’”

 

“The ones that live in snowy places are almost entirely white.”

 

“Seriously?” Weird.

 

From there they moved into big predator country. Jamie always wondered how those predators felt when the breeze blew the scent of prey animals over them. There were a few different species, but the morphology was pretty much the same, evolution sculpting just a few different types of big predators that fit perfectly in their environments. Cats, canids, including ones much larger than the ones at home.

 

They came to a glass wall with something large and brown curled up against it. Its fur was thick and coarse and in need of a comb. It looked like a large lump of hair to Jamie. Danny let Jamie down, and he approached the glass. It was visibly breathing, its huge form rising and falling slowly. Jamie tapped the glass with just a knuckle, and the thing stirred. He had to look just to see the top of it. He tapped again, it stood, shaking itself, and in a blur turned and slammed against the glass, sending Jamie sprawling back in alarm. Even the bigs were startled. His heart beating against his chest and his pants feeling warm, Jamie saw the thing walking away, and only when it was a several yards away did he get a good look at the whole of the thing. It was a gigantic bear.

 

Amanda bent down and helped him up the armpits, laughing. “Did he scare ya, buddy?” She dusted off the back of his shirt and shorts. It had moved out of sight.

 

Eyes still wide, Jamie asked, “What do you call that?” He knew it wasn’t called a ‘bear.’

 

“That’s a wolf.”

 

Jamie’s face fell into a ‘you’ve-got-to-kidding-me’ expression, and once more he felt like he was breaking the third wall. “Really?”

 

“Yeah. Dogs are their cousins.” He looked at her for some hint. If this were a joke it both very elaborate and very good, and Jamie was impressed by their commitment to it. Daniel was back at the glass trying to catch a glimpse of the thing around the corner. He’d missed the conversation.

 

“Danny,” Jamie asked, gesturing toward himself with his index finger as he stepped away from Amanda. Danny knelt down again. “Can we be guys for a second, a little honesty between men?”

 

“Uh, sure,” Danny replied, expecting some guy parts question or something. He didn’t have much little experience.

 

“That thing,” Jamie said pointing to the enclosure, “what’s it called?”

 

“A wolf. They’re related to dogs.” Jamie eyed him skeptically, looking for some sign Danny was being facetious. He saw nothing. Truth, or an elaborate joke.

 

“Thanks,” Jamie replied.

 

“Uh … any time,” Danny said, confused. He stood up, and they walked back to the group. He leaned over to Amanda and whispered, “What was that about?”

 

“Jamie’s got this thing about dogs. Not sure why.”

 

They kept walking. Jamie saw the elephants, who he especially didn’t like to see behind a fence, and ungulates of all kinds. In the largest enclosure yet, Jamie saw something about the size of an elephant, but furry, with a thick tail and long claws he could as it sat upright.

 

“It’s a giant ground sloth,” Lauri volunteered. “New to you?”

 

“Sort of. We used to have them. They went extinct, I don’t know, like 20,000 years ago.”

 

They were now walking back toward the entrance, passing through the reptile and amphibian section. Some were outside. The tortoises we’re apparently in heat, something none of them had, and the sound the male made with each … effort … gave them a good laugh, though Becky led Jamie away quickly.

 

The went into the reptile house, which didn’t do the building justice. It was more like a stadium, accommodating a menagerie of cold-blooded beasts large and small and in between.

 

“We’re not going down the snake corridor,” Laurie declared.

 

Jamie declared, “I’m on her side.”

 

The animals started small and got larger as they got deeper into the complex. It was humid in there and smelled of perpetual wetness. By the time they reached the end, Jamie was unsure whether he had just seen dinosaurs or not.

 

“Want to check out the petting zoo?”

 

They walked through a gate decorated with anthropomorphic animals. It was loud and crowded with littles and with very young big children. Jamie expected farm animals, but instead found pets. They approached a large enclosure filled with commotion. Peering over the top, Jamie saw dogs and puppies. The familiarity of it as much as the cuteness of it made him smile.

 

“Can I go in?”

 

“Sure,” Becky answered, lifting him over the short wall.

 

Jamie walked a few feet in, and first one and then another dog came over to see what he was about. Jamie liked dogs but had never had one. He knew many of the breeds. There Labradors and English Mastiffs, Dachshunds and Spaniels, Weimaraners and Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Shiba Inus and Poodles, Lhasa Apsos and Beagles and more.

 

Many of the dogs were over the scene, no longer excited by the people. They laid in a pile or by themselves, allowing themselves to be pet but not much engaging. Others were all wagging tail and happy panting, going from person to person sure each one was their new best friend.

 

The couple of dog that came to inspect Jamie became three, then four, and then Jamie sat down on the ground and was surrounded by lolling tongues trying to lick his face and cold snouts sniffing him everywhere and the wonderful, vicarious pleasure of dogs with no sense of personal space climbing and leaning and lay on you. Jamie laid back and let the dogs get in his face and lick his hands and step on and over him and lay down next to and on him.

 

After a bit, Amanda quipped, “Which one is Jamie again?”

 

Danny could keep up with her. “The hairless one at the bottom.”

 

Jamie made furry friends fast. When he stood up, a couple followed him and whined when he got out of the enclosure. Luckily, they’re dogs and made new friends instantly. Becky brushed Jamie off.

 

“So what are those called here?”

 

“Bruins.” A very elaborate joke. “What do you call them?”

 

“Dogs.” Amanda eyed him suspiciously.

 

“I think we’ve seen everything,” Becky interjected. “Who’s hungry for dinner?”

[Sarah Penguin]

Maybe they'll eat at a zoo restaurant and have special little menu items shaped like sloths and bats and stuffs and jamie will get fed?

[YourFNF]

As a biologist the whole dog v.s. bear thing is baffling.... I mean I know they're closely related but the body morphology and genetic structure is noticeably different... I want pictures...

*goes to googles*

Ok here's a cladogram

Fuck Me!!!

Are these things Hemicyoninaes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemicyoninae

I'm in my 6th year of undergraduate studies and even I had to look that up....

Or possibly a common ancestor from the same infraorder Arctoidea?

Which would the divergence of time line between our worlds at roughly the late Eocene?

But plants or reptiles are effected so that puts the divergence early possibly at the emergence of vertebrates.

But what is the key variable? Why did life in this world go to such a large scale? Low gravity? The world is smaller? I think that was mentioned.... But wouldn't that effect ocean currents, weather, and dispersal of species in turn?

?

@Author_Alex

 

[Alex Bridges]

19 minutes ago, YourFNF said:

As a biologist the whole dog v.s. bear thing is baffling.... I mean I know they're closely related but the body morphology and genetic structure is noticeably different... I want pictures...

*goes to googles*

Ok here's a cladogram

Fuck Me!!!

Are these things Hemicyoninaes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemicyoninae

I'm in my 6th year of undergraduate studies and even I had to look that up....

Or possibly a common ancestor from the same infraorder Arctoidea?

Which would the divergence of time line between our worlds at roughly the late Eocene?

But plants or reptiles are effected so that puts the divergence early possibly at the emergence of vertebrates.

But what is the key variable? Why did life in this world go to such a large scale? Low gravity? The world is smaller? I think that was mentioned.... But wouldn't that effect ocean currents, weather, and dispersal of species in turn?

?

@Author_Alex

 

It's just that they've swapped the names. No more to it than that.

[HyperShark]

I am phobic to dogs normally. I tend to avoid them as much as possible, including crossing the road if there is a possible close encounter with large dogs without leashes on the pavement further ahead. Having "bears" in the world would scare me to death. I think I would put on my form "no pets" to make sure I would never be put with a bear, that would be chaos on day one.

 

If there a section for preferences like that on the form in the adoption agency?

[YourFNF]

43 minutes ago, Author_Alex said:

It's just that they've swapped the names. No more to it than that.

Ohhh..... ?

[CuddlesAndLove]

That was fun! I enjoyed that one  I love the confusion around dogs and bears!

[Shawnie]

I loves the zoo ? interesting animals , I remember swinging from between mom and dad on the way to the entrance little flash back ?