Introduction
Flocks of Birds
I have an unusual gift.
I see flocks of birds. They wheel about; ever-changing shapes of black clouds as they evade predators... real or imaginary. They become thunderheads, black sailed ships, and giant super-birds only to explode into thousands of distinct birds again.
Seeing flocks of birds is not that unusual. I mean, you see flocks of birds too. They dance and trace icons in the air for you just like they do for me. They coat your power lines just like they coat my power lines. They eat berries off of your trees and crap on your windshield just like they eat berries off of my trees and crap on my windshield. There is nothing unusual about seeing flocks of birds. But my gift is unusual.
It started when I was a toddler. From before I could say "bird", I had loved them. I pointed gleefully at the bird clouds until I could speak. Then I shouted the shapes they made as they made them. My parents thought this was cute, so they praised and affirmed attentively at first and more absentmindedly as the years caused the delightfulness of my game to wear off.
Somewhere around age seven, the confusion started. One day my parents could not find the birds I was pointing out - all six thousand of them. At first this happened occasionally and was dismissed as a childish prank, but soon it was viewed as a behavioral issue. My parents thought I was making up birds for attention. After all, I was the third child and their job as foster parents to eight additional children was emotionally exhausting, so no doubt I was pointing out imaginary birds to get noticed. They tried spending more personal time with me and when that did not help they tried scolding my apparent lies.
After being admonished one time out of five and cringed at the other four, I became paranoid. I only mentioned birds after other people did. My parents were elated when my apparent behavioral issues went away and I went back to being the most emotionally stable child in the house.
For me, however, the problem had just started. I had to figure out what was going on. It seemed the more spectacular the display, the blacker the sky became with surging feathered forms, the more likely it was that I was the only one seeing them. I began to apply my own grade school version of the scientific method in my inquiry. I started with my classmates. I would point and yell at the birds. If I got funny looks, they were my birds and I would pretend to be joking. If not, they were everyone's birds.
Soon I could tell my birds from everyone's birds. My birds are slightly more distinct. The air is mildly bluer around each of my birds. My birds are clearer, somehow a bit easier to see than everyone's birds. They are a smidgen more graceful and poetic in the shapes their clouds form. I do not call them "real" birds or "imaginary" birds, because my birds leave crap on a windshield just as regularly as everyone's birds.
So that is my unusual gift. I see birds, flocks of birds that you do not see. As far as the paranormal goes it is pretty useless. This gift does not help me avoid bad luck or stumble into good luck. It does not provide insight into the inner workings of life. The birds provide no omen to foretell disaster or guide to the otherworld. As far as I can tell, they are perfectly mundane.
Naturally, I never tell anyone about my birds. I never told my parents. They would have just assumed I needed more attention or discipline. I never told my friends. Who would believe me? I have never even told my wife. I have always assumed that if I convinced anyone that I believed I saw birds no one else could see it would be a trip to the loony bin. Even someone who loved me would assume I was crazy.
I am not crazy. I would know, wouldn't I? I just see birds that you cannot see. That's all.
Since I am not crazy, there must be some other explanation. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out. In college, it became a bit of an obsession. I spent countless hours in the medical library looking at journals and case studies. I spent time in the regular library's paranormal section banging my head against other people’s weirdness and hoping to find someone, anyone who saw things that were not there. I needed an explanation. There wasn't one.
I still think about it today. My birds show up regularly now, no matter where I live or what time of year it is, I see flocks of my birds at least once a week. I cannot get away from it, so I think about it. Call it an exercise in not being crazy. I have generated a slew of theories, but none of them could be scientifically proven. Quite frankly scientists would rather shut me up in an institution and get back to doing something that generates profit. So I keep quiet about it and mentally theorize.
Here is my best theory. The birds exist. They are real birds. My birds are born. My birds eat. My birds crap on windshields. My birds grow and lay eggs and raise babies and they die. They are real, normal, common birds. That is the basis for my best theory: real birds.
Why am I the only one who can see these normal birds? This is where I crack open my volume of armchair physics. Consider the idea of parallel universes. Smarter people than I, who have not indicated that they see birds unavailable to others, have theorized that there are three physical dimensions, time as a fourth, and countless others I won't pretend to know or understand. Among all these dimensions the idea exists that every possible outcome of every possible set of circumstances from creation to the end of the world spawns or already exists as another reality. All of these realities run in the same three physical dimensions and at the same time. They are separated by some other dimensional something or another. I am still a bit fuzzy on it.
What does this have to do with my birds? Perhaps two of the realities, these parallel universes, blur for me. Maybe because of some unresolved circumstance or unmade decision, I see parts of another reality, a reality of what was or is or might have been but not mine. The birds just might be symptomatic of a bigger problem of how things are and how things might be.
Of course, parallel universes and alternate realities are probably pseudo-science, or worse yet, science fiction that I have managed to canonize in my head, but I hope not. I hope not because living between two parallel universes sure beats just being crazy.
I have also considered the possibility that I have gone mad and have not realized it. Do I pose any threat to my family? Is the public safe with me around? I manifest very few other forms of madness that I have come across in my studies. So, I have come to the conclusion that in the same way that my birds are pretty boring as far as the paranormal goes, they are also pretty harmless. I don not rely on my birds to influence decisions I make. In fact I have never really interacted with them in any way. If I have the crazy, the crazy I have is a completely functional form.
Recently there have been a rash of autobiographies, tell-all books, and memoirs where the authors, in an effort to dress up the story, to make it more exciting or present themselves in a better light, have stretched the truth or completely make up new parts of their life. After quickly rising to fame and rounding the talk show circuit they were exposed as lying frauds and limped back into anonymity to lick their wounds in disgrace.
I feel for these people. As I sit down to write my memoirs, I find that I do not want you to get to know me. What if you decide I am not special but instead crazy? Do you see why I cannot be completely truthful in my memoirs? And who knows, maybe the version of the story written down is true. Maybe it is the true story that happened in that other universe. Maybe these facts happened in the universe where decisions changed the course of my life to the current one, the one that causes me to see flocks of birds.
Maybe all of this happened in the universe that has given me my unusual gift.