Dec. 21, 2012

Chapter 1
The End of the World

Chapter Description: The Mayans were right about Dec. 21, 2012 ... sort of ...

The Mayans said the world would end on Dec. 21, 2012.

They were right.

But not in the way you’d think it would. Life did continue … just … not as we knew it.

I often think about such things while I use the bathroom. It seems like the bathroom reminds me more than anywhere else. As I walk past the urinal, I try to remember what it was like to be able to use it. Now, if I got up on my tippy toes, I might be able to reach the smaller one — in some bathrooms. Peeing like that is rather uncomfortable, so I’ve gotten used to using the toilet. Besides, I have to poop, anyways.

As I hoist myself up onto the seat, I try to remember how it was to have to crouch down to sit on a toilet, what it was like to have long, thick legs that didn’t dangle in the air. I look at my tiny legs and remember that they used to be big and hairy. I used to have hair all over my body, especially above my penis. I know it used to be black and scraggly, but now it’s hard to imagine on my small, thin penis with the tiny testicles pulled up tightly to it. I haven’t forgotten how it used to feel, but I haven’t felt that way in a long time. Not really.

I have to sit on the edge of the toilet so I don’t fall in and I’m convinced that this once wasn’t a concern for me. After I wipe my smooth butt with my smooth hand, I pull my small shorts up my smooth legs and make my way to the sink. Just barely over the counter I can see my small, smooth face. That of a 5-year-old boy. Or maybe 4, or even 6. It doesn’t really matter that much.

I get up on my toes to stretch my pencil-thin arm out to turn on the faucet. The soap’s a little trickier, but I just manage to get it with my fingertips. As I wash my small, dainty hands, I exhale a high-pitched sigh. Going to the bathroom used to be a lot easier when I was a grownup. When I was 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds. But that’s not me anymore. I am now a little boy who is 3-foot-4 and 35 pounds. And I have been for the past 50 years … and will be forever.

We still don’t really know what caused the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, or how or why it happened. We just know that at the same time the entire population of the world instantly became roughly 20 years younger. The whole transformation process took less then a second. There was just a quick little “pop” and senior citizens became middle-aged adults again. The middle-aged were returned to their primes. Rolls of fat simply disappeared. Hair re-grew and regained its color. Muscles were hardened and skin was smoothed. It all worked out great for the older folks, but not so much for the younger generation.

Anyone younger than 20 simply disappeared. They either turned into a shriveled, dead fetus or a loose collection of cells, but either way, they dried up, disappeared and ceased to exist in the space of one second. Many people in their early 20s also died, as well. You see, when we shrank, our bodies shrank up in all directions — kind of like everything was pulled in toward our belly button. And because it all happened so fast, our bodies didn’t have enough time to gently ease their way to the ground. Instead, we all suddenly became small children and babies floating in mid-air and fell down hard to the ground after the one second of transformation had ended. A 21-year-old standing up suddenly became a tiny infant falling from three feet in the air, caught up in a choking tangle of clothes and landing hard on the cement. Even people sitting up in chairs would sometimes fall over backwards and break their tiny necks.

I was 25 when it happened, and I was lucky to be lying on a couch. I had graduated college and was visiting home for Christmas. While I was on the couch, playing the PlayStation, I felt the strange tingling that everyone around the world felt at the exact same time. It all happened extremely quick, but also seemed to last a lot longer than it really did. I felt like I was melting, or being sucked away to nothingness. Just when I thought I’d disappear completely, it stopped, and I found myself falling a few inches back onto the couch. Where I just barely had my head on the armrest and feet hanging off the end, I now was in the middle, drowning in my clothes.

As I slowly started to pull myself up and make sense of the situation, my parents came running downstairs. But now they were roughly the same age I was just a minute ago. I looked at my hands and realized that these weren’t the hands of a shrunken 25-year-old. These were the hands of a small, innocent boy. These hands were so familiar, undeniably mine, but they looked and felt like I only knew them from a distant dream. They couldn’t be mine, this couldn’t be me, this couldn’t be real. But as I slowly moved my fingers, I slowly began to comprehend. But I resisted. I think I just stared at my hands without moving for more than 5 minutes. I didn’t want to, couldn’t come to grips with this reality. As much as I wanted to stand up and examine my new body and look at my face in a mirror, I physically could not remove myself from the couch.

I eventually gained some sort of acceptance after my parents sat next to me and wrapped me in a warm embrace. It felt so odd and frightening to be so small and weak next to them. But the hug was comforting and reassuring and I gradually tore my gaze away from my hands, returned the love to my parents and wept with them. We didn’t fully realize while we cried on that couch at that time, but our tears had true meaning when we found out my 23-year-old brother was driving his car and died when he was turned into a toddler. Our weeping only intensified when we learned that my 19-year-old sister had evaporated into nothingness. Sorrow and fear didn’t leave room for anger or confusion at the time.

A lot of people died on Dec. 21, 2012. Roughly half the world’s population. Planes crashed, cars piled up on each on the freeways. There were mass blackouts across the globe. Everyone was in mourning. Everyone had lost someone. But our collective grief pulled us all together. And while the world descended into near-anarchy, we survivors were united enough to ensure civilization did not completely collapse. There was a lot of work to be done and we all pitched in to clean up. I remember being very frustrated by my small size and inabilities at the time. I was now so short and skinny, and I didn’t even have any clothes that fit me for about a week, I just couldn’t stop myself from breaking down and crying like the small child I had become. But I eventually did gather myself together and found other ways to help clean the mess despite my frail body.

As I rinsed the soap from my hands I remembered that turning point in my life half a century ago. It had taken some time, but I had learned that I could still live a happy, meaningful life in this thin frame of a little boy. I looked back at my little face in the mirror as I turned off the faucet with my little hand. I smiled and took in my tiny baby teeth, my small button nose and my incredibly smooth, hairless skin. I might have been handsome when I was a grownup, but I wasn’t this cute.