Freddy had begun to realize that the best years of his life had already passed him by. In fact, those halcyon days numbered but 365, his best year – when he was five.

When Freddy was five, he had already begun to read, mostly volumes from the likes of Richard Scarry and Theodore Geisel – talking bears and Grinches. His mother, bless her damaged heart, had taught him to read before he’d even been toilet-trained.

She read to him incessantly, put a poster of the alphabet above his bed. Every morning, when he opened his small blue eyes, he was confronted by his Ps and Qs.

When he was five, Freddy was enrolled in kindergarten – half-days broken by an intermission of nap time (security blankets were de rigeur). Freddy was the only child in a class of 23 who had the ability to see a word on paper, understand it in his brain and emit the corresponding sound in his vocal chords.

The teacher, Ms. Peabody, would call on him regularly to stand and read simple stories to the class. He’d have been the envy of the kids if only they had known what envy was.

When he was five, on the school bus home, in a green upholstered seat that five-year-olds could not see over unless standing, Freddy had his first kiss: Leslie Camp. A frail bespectacled girl with flat shoulder-length brown hair, a white turtleneck, a below-the-knee skirt of her family tartan and brown shiny buckled shoes. The kiss only lasted a quarter of a second but it was long enough to scare the Hell out of Freddy.

He never told a soul what had happened. And he never kissed Leslie Camp again.

Later in the school year, Freddy’s class of youngsters were involved in the production of a school fashion show. Each class at the school was instructed to put together their own variations on a theme and Freddy’s class was given the dubious task of modeling sleepwear.

Freddy’s two teachers had rehearsed his class several times in the week before the show, fine-tuning each entrance and turn. The children were a rambunctious bunch, almost as difficult to control as a cast of professional actors.

Freddy’s direction was identical to the rest of his classmates: upon hearing your name called out, enter upstage right; walk to the spotlight holding the eyes at downstage center; turn around 360° once; for the boys, a bow is given, for the girls, a curtsy; then turn away from the spotlight and walk back upstage, exiting stage left.

“Simple enough,” the simple Ms. Peabody thought. “Shouldn’t take longer than thirty seconds per child.”

What Ms. Peabody failed to recognize was that most children do not understand the man-made perception of time, nor do they tend to follow its precepts.

On the night of the fashion show, the public school’s small auditorium was filled with almost three hundred parents and teachers. By the time Freddy’s class was ready to begin their set, about an hour into the proceedings, the night was already overlong. Each class, it seemed, had been given the same uninspired direction: enter, turn, exit.

Mrs. Armstrong, the principal of the school, stood at a podium to the left of the stage. Prior to each class presentation, she was handed a piece of paper on which was written the names of the students she was to announce. At the beginning of the evening, she had enough verve to throw in an occasional comment about a child’s attire but, as the show wore on and after several missed cues, she reduced herself to merely naming the student (and hoping the teachers backstage would send out the children in the order in which they appeared on her list).

“Delia Smythe,” Mrs. Armstrong said into a microphone that was lined into the auditorium’s P.A. system.

Frowning, Delia entered from upstage right in a nightie that her mother had worn when she was her daughter’s age. It had been stored in a chest among mothballs and hadn’t been fully relieved of its stale pungency.

Backstage, Freddy was on deck. His fashion was a ready-to-wear set of pajamas which his mother had purchased at K-mart for this very occasion. They were beige and covered with tiny orange and brown flying saucers. Not cool, quite ugly.

Freddy curiously peered around the edge of the wing but could not see the audience from his vantage. Ms. Peabody pulled him back before anyone in the crowd caught a glimpse of the boy in the wings.

“Now Freddy,” Ms. Peabody reminded him, “remember what I told you. Go down to the spotlight, do two turns and exit on the other side.”

“I remember, Ms. Peabody,” Freddy assured her, returning his gaze to the brightly lit stage. Something was out there, he knew.

As Delia curtsied, Mrs. Armstrong returned her attention to the task at hand, repeated her name, thanking her. There was mild applause, but also a murmur in the audience that confused Armstrong. She wasn’t sure what the cause; she had zoned out for a moment, thinking of the school board’s policy meeting she was to attend the following week; she was unprepared.

“Next up,” Armstrong said, looking at her list, “is Fred Long.”

Backstage, Freddy suddenly went into shock, not quite apoplectic but stultifying enough to keep him off the stage.

“Freddy, go,” Ms. Peabody nudged him. But Freddy turned away from the blanket of light.

“Fred Long?” Mrs. Armstrong requested again.

Ms. Peabody was not one to suffer his foolishness and promptly spun him back around and shoved him out on to his first position upstage right.

There was polite applause from the audience which reassured Freddy to continue with his unfashionable display. He walked the few paces into the spotlight at downstage center.

“Ah, there you are,” said Mrs. Armstrong, and feeling the need to cover for the few moments of downtime, continued, “Fred is wearing a pair of pajamas colorfully decorated with orange and brown flying saucers.”

Freddy barely heard her words. He stood in the bright spotlight, unable to see anything beyond the scrim of the stage but a few dim house lights at the back of the auditorium. But he knew there was something out there.

He looked to Peabody for a reminder of her guidance.

She stared at him from the wings, spinning her index finger and gently mouthing the words, “Spin around. Spin around.” Her shoulder-length nutmeg hair and plain khaki dress would have been sufficiently attractive in 1963 but ten-plus years later they were as fashionable as the Blue Light Special which adorned Freddy.

Freddy took his turn in the white light. His eyes casually noticed the grain of wood on the stage floor. Someone at the back of the audience quietly cleared their throat. Freddy didn’t notice any of the faces in the wings, not Peabody, not Jerry, the red-haired, freckle-faced boy who was now on deck; Jerry was six-years-old but for some reason had missed out the previous year for health reasons (or early karma from a previous life).

And once again the light was upon Freddy’s face, nearly blinding his eyes which enjoyed the squint. He had never encountered a mob mentality before; this was his discovery of an unseen audience. He realized, they could not possibly take their eyes off of him. They were his subjects as much as he was their object. The feeling was palpable; with this great power comes great irresponsibility.

At the podium, Mrs. Armstrong was desiring to keep things moving right along, like any primary school principal. “Thank you, Fred Long,” she said and flipped over the cue card which listed the students’ names.

But Freddy did not move to bow. He blankly stared out at the audience with a facial expression so careless, so neutral that it would eventually become known as his poker face. He thought of glancing at Peabody in the wings but he already knew what she would be doing. He knew his instructions; he simply chose not to follow them.

He began another 360° turn. Some spark inside him shot up to his brain and motivated him to take more time in the spotlight, no matter how truly aversive the clothes he was wearing. On this spin, his head was held a little higher; he caught glimpse of the upstage curtain but blurred out his sight where the faces of a demonstrative teacher and several confused children would be. His face returned to the shine of the 1000 watts above him. A smirk began to form at the edge of his mouth but no one was close enough to witness its birth.

“Thank you, Fred Long,” Armstrong tried again, but Freddy would have none of it.

He began a third turn.

Peabody stood helpless and worried in the stage wing, struggling to figure out of how she could support Freddy to take the next step, to bow. He was caught in some kind of brain loop, she thought.

Freddy closed his eyes as he turned away from the audience, not one of whom was not filled with curious anticipation. They had been so bored by the endless rounds of kids in thick new ties and smoking jackets or ruby red shoes and perms. They welcomed the break in the cycle of monotony.

As Freddy turned back to face the crowd, he opened his eyes and was overcome by the glow in his heart that forced him to raise his right hand high in the air and sing in deaf tone to the world, “I’m in the mood for love!”

As Peabody’s mouth dropped to the bottom rung of the ladder it had been politicking to climb for years, the audience was no longer uncertain of this child on the stage. In fact, the tsunami of laughter that rolled over them was assuredly in tune with the boy on stage whose voice was not in tune.

“Simply because you’re near me!” Freddy exclaimed in song.

Armstrong, trying to stem the not-so-quiet revolution which had befallen her grace, interjected into the microphone, “Thank you, Fred, that will be enough.” She could not be heard over the roars of delight that had enthralled the 250+ parents and friends in the darkness of the auditorium. She did not understand their power.

Peabody tried to reel Freddy back in as well, hushing him from a seat of power off-stage where there was no power, “Fred, get off the stage!”

Freddy continued, “Funny but when you’re near me…”

Peabody knew that to close the curtains would mean defeat – she had no strings left to pull. Suddenly, Armstrong appeared from behind a break in the curtain, ordering, “Ms. Peabody, would you please extract that boy from the stage?!”

“I’m in the mood for love!!!” Closing off the first verse of the song, Freddy was as alive as he’d ever been. The audience was rapt with laughter and heartily applauded his efforts to bring life to what had been until then a non-plus event.

Peabody did not want to disappoint her superior, the officious Mrs. Armstrong. She rushed the stage from the wing, firm in her course to remove the boy from his spotlight. Bathing in the glow of the light and the appeal of his people, Freddy sensed Peabody’s lumbering approach and was quick to extricate himself from an available position.

Peabody reached for his arm which had already moved. He was behind her faster than she could notice; the shine of the spotlight brought sparkles to her sight.

Over her shoulders, Freddy sang, “I’m in the mood for love!”

As Peabody’s retinas compensated, she spotted him behind her to the left. The audience was rollicking, now louder than before. The child was a court jester, there to raise their spirits with his foolishness. Peabody rushed Freddy again, but he swiftly deeked her out. His deft precision at evading the hunter was the result of the few years of training he’d received avoiding the objects thrown at him by his older brother, Gordon.

“Freddy, get off the stage now!” Peabody ordered him.

“Ms. Peabody, please,” Armstrong pleaded at the microphone, still barely audible over the laughter.

Suddenly, out of the darkness of the stage left wings came Mr. Gouge, the overbearing and fetid grade four teacher who still had an enthusiasm for the inclusion of corporal punishment in the teaching vocation. With his hands outstretched, ready to grasp either hair or pajama fabric, Gouge was a bespectacled cyclops, a goonda, bent on caging the boy’s freedom of expression.

“Come here,” he ordered as he rushed Freddy. An idiotic statement, Freddy would later think, since it was Gouge who was doing the coming to where Freddy ably stood ready.

From one side came Peabody, from the other came Gouge. Freddy was doomed. His fifteen seconds in the spotlight was at its end and he retreated to where he often did when confronted with such physical challenge. He became as small as he could, collapsing into a ball of a boy in front of everyone’s eyes.

As Peabody and Gouge came forth to apprehend the childish Freddy Long, their eyes blinded from the light and their anachronistic social skills, their heads, thick with mud, made contact in a rather difficult and painful manner.

“Owwww,” yelped Ms. Peabody, holding her head where there would soon be a bruise.

“Jeez, watch where you’re going, woman,” spat Mr. Gouge, not needing to rub his already swollen head.

Seizing the opportunity to escape, Freddy sprinted from his contortion, exiting stage left to the resounding applause of the audience. No one there would forget the kid in the space-age pajamas who had captured their affections and wrought havoc upon two teachers and a principal.

Among the parents out there in the dark were Freddy’s mother and father, Mary and Alain Long. Mary had her head lowered, avoiding eye contact with any other living thing; from the way her stomach was convulsing, she was either crying or laughing. Alain, however, was staring directly at the stage, his eyes wide, his expression ghostly.

Beside Alain was Cynthia Smythe. From behind her smile, she noticed that he was not laughing, that his face was slowly oozing down his head. Something was not right with the man, she thought.

“Are you okay?” she asked Alain.

Without breathing, Alain replied, “That’s our son.”

And it became clear to Cynthia Smythe why this man was frightened of what they’d witnessed moments before. She sought a way to reassure the father.

“Don’t feel so bad,” she said with utter humility. “My daughter came out before your son wearing a see-through nightie and she forgot to wear her slip.”

After several moments of Freddy’s absence, the audience members slowly began to compose themselves. Seeking to reel them back in with a segue, Mrs. Armstrong spoke into the microphone with the falsest of gratitude, “Thank you, Fred Long.”

Meanwhile, backstage, Freddy was not feeling any gratitude, true or false. Ms. Peabody was chiding the boy for his irreverent attitude, explaining to him how he’d ruined the evening for everyone. The growling bastard-teacher Mr. Gouge stood nearby, wanting with every iota of his being to whip the boy senseless.

It was Freddy’s first experience on stage, beneath the power of those lights, before the power of the dark anonymous audience. He had no bow, no roses to hold. He would eventually go on to be a mildly-successful spoken word poet.

Delia Smythe would go on to become a stripper.