Normal is too mainstream...

It's been exactly 8 years, 4 months and 15 days since my eyes locked with his and he probably doesn't remember it but I still look at him the exact same way I did then.

I don't knock before entering his room, I am one of the few people who are allowed to do that and although I've been into his room so many times, it's still a lot to take in. The walls of his rooms speak his tongue; all his thoughts and musings intricately carved on wooden frames which are put up on his walls. My eyes rest on his face which looks even more beautiful while he sleeps so peacefully and I sit down on the chair by his bedside picking up his psychiatric report. My parents and the society think that there is something wrong with my baby brother's brain which is why he has to go visit his psychologist and also his speech therapist every week. The doctors call it an anomaly, the society calls it an abnormality; I prefer to call it sheer awesomeness. I don't see what the fuss is all about though; so he doesn't know his multiplication tables and he has a bit of a trouble getting the words out - big deal!! All these weekly appointments aren't doing him any good anyway. 

After going through the report for like 5 minutes, I realized that they were still clueless so I put it back on his desk and got up to leave. However, a hand tugged on my t-shirt and I turned around to find him returning from his dreamland. "Dada," he says softly. Oh how my heart skips a beat every time he says that!! I wait patiently as he tries to say what's going on in his mind. I am the only one with whom he actually talks and sometimes it takes me a while to understand what he is trying to say but I am getting better every single day. So, it doesn't take me much time to figure out that he wants to go to the movies. "Sure, you lil bunny!! We'll go to the movies tomorrow. Make up your mind about which one you wanna see and I'll take a day off work," I winked. His eyes rest on the report I had put on his desk and seeing the confusion clouding his face makes me wanna shred the piece of paper into pieces. Instead, I plant a kiss on his forehead and whisper, "You listen to Dada very carefully and always keep this in mind; there's nothing wrong with you and anyone who thinks otherwise should come see your room and all these walls. People don't like what they don't understand so it's their problem not yours. Okay??" He tickled me in response; he does that when he's really happy and we laughed and talked till he was sleepy again.

The next morning we were all set to have a fun day together when I received a message from my office saying that they needed me to sign some papers. "It wouldn't take more than an hour I promise," I told him after I decided to take him along with me. After reaching there I showed him to the play room and pointed to all the books they had which he seemed to love. Some of the parents took their kids out after seeing him and I pretended not to be bothered by that. I gave him a peck on the cheek before leaving him but when I returned I was awestruck. He had remodeled the doll house we had put on display and the remodeling rendered every person in my office speechless. The dolls were shifted to the offices and the male figurines had been placed in the kitchen, ballet shoes were lying in the boy's room and roller skates in the girl's, the girl's room was no longer pink and the boy's room no longer blue, action figures were all over her bed and figure skaters on his . The icing on the cake was his note tucked on the front door - "Intolerant people are not very welcome."

My boss probably wouldn't be too happy to see the only thing made by his daughter ruined by an 8 year old kid but that didn't seem to matter. I was so full of joy and pride that I ran over to him, picked him up and showed him the dumbstruck faces of all those people who had been coming in to see what the fuss was about. I spoke in a low voice so only he could hear, "You see, this is what I have been meaning to tell you. The way your mind moves in a direction always against the flow is beyond their understanding and so they call your awesomeness an abnormality. I, on the other hand, believe that being normal is too mainstream, so you seem perfectly fine to me." 

I held up my hand and waited for him to give me a hi-fi and then off we went and when he smiled his lil bunny smile, I could feel nothing but glad for the way he was - different.