You and I are gonna live forever

So there I was, sitting at the computer as I do for thirty hours a day, feet on the desk, chair tilted back, the only sound being the click-click-clack of my keyboard and the sappy soft rock blaring from my computer speakers. Just like any other Sunday, it seemed. Click-Click-Clack until the clock strikes insanely late, and then bed-bed-bed. And so I sat, prepared to do just that, when one thing changed.

They told me Petrie was dead.

Petrie was our bird. Our stupid bird. A little blue and white budgie we’ve had for six years or so. My brother begged my parents to get a bird, for whatever reason, and when they finally caved, he pretty much ignored it constantly. You think my parents would have learned after the Bike Max and the Moon Shoes, but so it goes.

He was named after the little flying dinosaur in The Land Before Time, a touching movie that excelled in its ability to both rip-off Bambi and make a young Graphic V tear up a little. There was much celebration when he was brought home; placed beside the television in an elaborate birdcage filled with a big mess of kooky bird toys, he chirped away happily as people gathered and watched as if he was in there with sliced bread. And people would constantly take him out of his cage, and let him fly around a bit, giggling when he tried to claw someone’s eyes out or peck them to death. Petrie was fascinated with shiny things, and he’d constantly try to remove shiny necklaces and rings for his own personal gain. He got away with way more than I did, to be sure.

It was also around this time when I was told this bird knew how to talk. Now, the very thought of this dim-witted thing talking made me laugh out loud, but members of my family maintained that he was a chatterbox of a bird. It is their contention that over the years this bird has developed an extensive vocabulary and the ability to sing six songs off the “Best of Springstein” album. Meanwhile, I am the lone holdout, maintaining time after time that the bird is a fucking mute who doesn’t do anything but chirp loudly while I’m trying to watch TV. They hear this little mound of feathers reciting the six o’clock news in three different languages, and I hear mindless CHIRPING and nothing more. If there’s a silver lining to his death, it’s that I guess the family can all finally agree that he isn’t saying much of anything now.

As the months passed, the attention given to Petrie began to fade away. All enthusiasm wanes, and so it did here, with people deciding that staring at a little bird as he hops around his cage isn’t more exciting than going outside, or playing videogames, or frying ants with a magnifying glass. People stopped taking him out of his cage, and when he did get the opportunity to try to steal your ring or stab your eyes out, it just wasn’t as cute. And yet, having the brain of an IRC addict, Petrie just went right on chirping away beside the TV, pausing every so often to attack his own reflection in a fury.

And it went on like that. He never got much attention at all after the first few months. He just sat there in his cage, chirping, eating, and, if you’re INSANE and also STUPID, “talking”. A mass of blue and white feathers, mindless and joyless; chirp chirp chirp.

And now he’s gone.

I didn’t really react much to the news. Out of everybody, I cared the least about that damned bird. To me, he was just a noise that I had to tune out when I wanted to watch TV in the family room. I believe my response was a hearty “huh” and then I just moved on with my click-click-clack.

I went upstairs before I wrote this. Looking for a light snack and a Pepsi, as I so often do. And passing through the family room, I just saw that big empty space where the cage stood earlier. It had been there for six years or so, and now it wasn’t. There should have been more shadows in the room, and yet — nothing. Emptiness. It seemed so vast.

And now the house is empty. Standing quiet in the still of the night. And I can hear my typing, and I can hear my soft rock, but something is still missing. A faint chirping. I should be able to hear it, every so often, from up the stairs, as that stupid-ass bird just pecks away at his little toys and hops about from bar to bar. I should be able to hear that sound and there shouldn’t be so much empty space in the family room.

I can’t remember the last time it was like this. No chirping and so much empty space. There are things in life that you start to take for granted, as constants, as never changing — and I just lost one. A little one, nothing that hurts me personally or emotionally, but he’s still something that I miss. I’m not going to cry over this death, not by a long shot, and I’m not even going to grieve, but I do miss the bird for the constants he gave me. I miss Petrie because he was part of the things I heard, and saw, and felt in the place I call home.

I’ll never believe that bird could talk. And you’ll never catch me saying that I particularly liked him, because I didn’t. But as I head up to bed tonight, padding softly through the cascading darkness, I’m going to stop and stare. Thinking about that god damned bird and the stupid way he chirped incessantly, and jumped around despite the fact that nobody cared about him. And how he’d spend hours fighting his reflection in the mirror, and how his cage cast such a big shadow on the family room floor, and how I could hear his chirping from downstairs. Stand and stare, because despite not ever giving a damn about that bird, I can’t get over that empty space.

Matt
Waiting for the moon to come and light me up inside