I Will Teach the Pigeons Tricks

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Creative Nonfiction

Jul 30, 2023

Today, I’m introducing something new. A choose-your-own-adventure play on a piece of creative nonfiction. What’s started here is an account of more or less true events in my household. You to choose where you want to see the rest of the story go.

“Talent”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

My son considered the cello in his hands. He gripped the bow and stretched his arm long. When he moved his cello arm out to match the other, the instrument on his chest wobbled unsupported, rightfully nervous.
“I know what I can do for the talent show,” he said. His cello hand dropped back to the instrument on the child’s torso, and in the adjustment, his fingers brushed the strings with enough force to make a little sound. I could feel my three-year-old’s ears perk from the other room, the cello sound something of an invitation. To practice the instruments we play in our house is a two-parent endeavor: One parent – me – serving as the practicing parent, and the other – dear husband – the restraining parent. The practicing parent issues the order of songs and exercises for the practicing child (there are two players in our house at the moment) to scream and/or cry about, depending on the child. During the 10 minutes of productive pain that is the practice session, the restraining parent – dear husband – creates ways to engage, entertain, and barricade the three-year-old. Gates, bear hugs, TV, going outside, food, catching the child right before he bulldozes the cello, catching him right after he takes me down with his cute little head, putting him in the pack-n-play right next to the practicing sibling (providing a very real sense of urgency as inevitably the three-year-old finds discarded toys or miscellanea in arm’s reach that he throws at the instrument, parent, and sibling) all serve as great and less-than-great options.
On this day, with the wind in his curly blond hair, my three-year-old bounded around the corner. He was almost to us when he slipped and toppled right into the leg of the baby grand piano that sat there, just waiting for it, right behind me. The child stood, shook himself off like the tiny maniac he is, and reset. The piano shuddered. A near disaster. The baby gate we stood around the instrument does not withstand the force the child collects when he gets his running starts, but it does dissuade the child from getting up in the piano’s business and wedging toys where they shouldn’t be wedged and chewing legs that shouldn’t be chewed.
When the sounds of the cello strings and the toddler shouts and the piano shudders quieted, my oldest son blinked at me, entirely unphased, and said again, “I know what I can do for the talent show.”
The three-year-old bit my ankle and wandered away.
“Yeah?” I said to my oldest. “You could play piano. I know you like that.” My son had been providing an aggressive rendition of “Ode to Joy” as an accented dismissal to all of our houseguests over the past few weeks, finding it in him to practice his piano in the final five minutes of someone’s visit but only if it was after 9:30 and the three-year-old was asleep. “Or you could play your cello recital piece. You know that one really well.” He prepared one song for an upcoming recital. He knew it about as well as any kid who had played cello for just over a year and whose practice sessions were an exercise in self-defense.
“No,” he said, contemplating his still-outstretched arm. He more or less ignored the cello as he stood from his stool, the instrument rolling off him like a skydiver jumping from a plane, a real hope-something-saves-me energy vibrating from the thing as I dove to catch it. “No,” he said again. “I will teach the pigeons tricks.”
He will teach the pigeons tricks.
He stepped away from the beached cello and looked into the distance, just over the waiting piano that he has played for many months.
“I will teach the pigeons to come when they’re called. I will have to have treats with me, yes, but I can train them to come back when they fly off.”
“Fly off where?”
“Well, when we’re at the park, or –”
“Are we talking about the talent show?”
“Right! Yes, so when they fly off in the gym. Or wait, will it be in the gym?”
“Yes, it will be in the gym.”
“Yeah, so when they fly away in the gym, I will have my treats, and my talent will be that they will come back to me when I call them.”
“What about the cello?”
“What?”
“Why don’t you play French Folk Song?”
“On the cello?”
“Yes, at the talent show.”
“Mom!”
“What?”
“It would be too hard to take the cello to school.”
Child. This child.
“Okay. Then what about piano?”
“I can’t take a piano to school!”
“Honey. There are pianos there. Already there, at school. Already existing.”
“Pigeons. Pigeons will be my talent,” he said.
Here is where it got tricky.
“Sweetheart, I’m talking about the talent show in two weeks. The one this year.”
He brightened. “It will be amazing.”
“I’m sure. But honey.”
“What?”
“The pigeons.”
“Yes!”
“Sweetie, where are the pigeons?”
This didn’t stop him. “I don’t have them yet.”
“Right. We don’t have any pigeons.”
“Yet.”
“Right. But we do have two musical instruments that you already know how to play.”
“Pigeons. Or I’m not doing it.”
Class dismissed. He left.
I finished zipping the cello into its case and secured the baby gate around the piano.

Now, you choose what happens next. Up until this point, what has happened is done. You vote on the next piece of this story.

Your options are these:

The boy acquires a pair of pigeons one week before the talent show. There is still time to sign up for the talent show, but there is definitely not enough time to acclimate the pigeons, much less train them to do tricks. Will the pigeons get along with one another? With him? Will they have New York accents?
The boy does not sign up for the talent show, recognizing that he will not, in fact, own any pigeons to show off. His parents understand his commitment to bird ownership and decide to buy a bird for him, but only one, and not a pigeon. What bird could it be? Would it do tricks like he wants? Is it instead an entirely different animal that they try to pass off as a bird?
The boy borrows a pair of pigeons from a man he meets at the park, whom the boy happened upon while climbing a tree. The man says he lives in the trees with the birds, and so of course he has “a few” birds he can lend to a wanting child. The boy, so consumed by the idea of having pigeons if only for a while, does not find the man peculiar or creepy. The man comes through, sort of, in the sense that he provides two pigeons in a waterlogged cardboard box he clearly dug out of the recycling bin, but he requests the boy return them as soon as the talent show is over “or else.” The boy accepts the pigeons and takes them to school, without the knowledge of his parents. Will the pigeons escape inside the school? Will the pigeons actually be fantastic, amicable creatures, ready to perform for this third grader and win him all the fame he could want? Will one of the pigeons be drawn to cello music? Or does the creepy tree man set off a flock of revenge pigeons to collect the ones he lent out?

Vote for only one. I will expound on whichever option you choose in the next issue. Tell me which of these you think approaches what actually happened in our house, or tell me which of these you wish had happened.

MotherFiction

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