The Right Thing To Do

When on my 12th year father gave me a birthday card with the number of days I had lived printed inside it. I had to sit down and wait for my heart to stop leaping over imaginary walls. There were 4.382 walls to jump over, It took me days, by the end of which I was much older than I should have been. When I tried to explain my feelings to him, he grinned, often that grin was more a sneer as he poked an incriminating finger at my face. It was a running joke for him I guess. What does a boy do with that kind of number? A day is a long time for a kid, but that number seemed like a worm cut in two, both ends wriggling away to god knows where. I took the card and pinned it to a bedroom wall Daily I would add more numbers with a blue marker until father made me wash the days away. I bought a pocket calculator, when father died, mother helped me slip it into his coffin, it seemed the right thing to do.