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“Hey Grunkle Stan! Check this out!”
Stan folded the paper he was reading over and looked up at the source of the noise. Mabel stood in front of him, bouncing excitedly on her feet while holding out a sparkly pink binder. “Watchu got there, sweetie?”
“It’s a photo album from when Dipper and I were kids!” she said, beaming from ear to ear. She opened it up and flipped through a few of the pages, too quickly for Stan to make out the details on any of the photos inside. “I forgot I packed it. It’s been ages since I looked through it. Wanna see?”
“Sure, he said, patting the cushion beside him. Mabel’s grin widened as she hopped up onto the couch, feet tucked beneath her in a way that sent phantom aches through Stan’s knees and ankles. “How far back does this go?”
“Umm…” Mabel flipped to the cover. “It’s from two-thousand-two to two-thousand-four.”
“Good gravy, were you even alive then?” Stan teased, grabbing her shoulder giving her a playful shake.
Mabel shook her head with an exasperated smile. “I think we were three to five in this one. There’s another one with all our baby pics, but I left that at home.”
“Alright, alright. Let’s have a look.”
Mabel excitedly flipped open the album and began to narrate through all of the pictures.
“This was the time we went to the petting zoo! Mom had to stop me from climbing into the goat enclosure. It wasn’t my fault. They were so cute! Oh, and here’s Dipper getting his arm chewed by one of ‘em.”
“Oh, this was at our uncle’s beach house! Well, he’s not actually our uncle, but we called him that anyways. He used to let us stay at his beach house when he wasn’t there. He’s dead now, so we don’t do that anymore.”
“This was Dipper’s fourth birthday party! We had it later ‘cuz he didn’t want to share a birthday party with a girl. He was so scared of getting cooties.”
And so on. Stan’s butt was starting to get sore from sitting. At the rate they were going, they would be here a loooong time. Not that Stan minded. He didn’t have diddly-squat to do anyways.
“Oh, and here’s me and Dipper playing ‘lines!’”
“Lines?” he asked, interrupting her spiel. He leaned closer, squinting to get a better look at the picture in question.
It was a slightly blurry shot of Mabel and Dipper in what looked like a hallway. Dipper was on the floor, hunched over a line of books set out on the floor, so long it went out of the frame. There was a stack of books on Dipper’s other side. Mabel stood above him in some kind of sparkly yellow princess dress, arms stuck out beside her. She was mid-step, clearly walking along the trail of books. Dipper seemed oblivious to her actions, fully focused on placing the book in his hand with the others already in the line.
“It’s a game Dipper made up,” Mabel explained. “Well, actually, I kinda made it up. He used to take all the books off the bookshelf and make a huge line across the entire floor, and I would walk across it like a bridge.”
“And he found that fun?” Stan asked, incredulous.
Mabel shrugged. “He did weird stuff like that all the time. I stopped trying to figuring him out a looong time ago.”
“Figure who out?” came the sudden voice of Ford from above them.
Stan looked up. “Dipper and the weird game he played as a kid.”
“Weird games,” Mabel corrected. “He did a lot of weird stuff.”
“Which game are you referring to, exactly?”
“Lines,” said Mabel. She turned the book and held it out for Ford to see. “Dipper used to line up his books. He didn’t do anything else with them, he just kept going until Mom or Dad told him to stop.”
“That is strange,” said Ford with a puzzled frown. “What child finds enjoyment in taking books off shelves?”
“Dipper, apparently,” Stan chuckled.
“He was a special kid,” Mabel laughed right along with him. She flipped to another page. “See, here’s one of his other games. We didn’t have a name for this one.”
Though upside down, Stan could clearly make out the image of kid-Dipper standing by a cubby full of organizing bins. He held one of the bins in his hands, arms outstretched as he dumped all of its contents on the floor. The picture was taken mid-dump. The toys blurred as they fell to the ground. Mabel stood in the background playing in a toy kitchen.
“He used to dump all our toys out on the floor and spend hours putting them back,” Mabel explained. “My parents hated it. My Mom spent so much time organizing them, and Dipper didn’t like it, so every time she cleaned them up, he went and did it himself. He spent more time organizing the toys than he did actually playing with them.”
Stan was baffled. What kid found cleaning fun? Stan remembered hating cleaning when he was a kid. He’d do anything to get out of it. Organizing bins for hours sounded like torture, even now at his age. He couldn’t imagine a kid finding anything about that fun.
Judging by Ford’s expression, he seemed to think the same thing. He and Stan exchanged equally baffled looks while Mabel busied herself with flipping through the book again.
“Here’s another one,” she said, stopping some time ahead. This picture showed Mabel and Dipper sitting at a picnic table outside, a little older than they’d been in the last two pictures. Both of them were painting. Mabel’s picture was full of pinks and purples and stickers and smiley faces. Dipper’s was more normal, being a scene of some vague outdoor space. There was a grassy bit at the front, hills in the background, some clouds in the sky, and a sun in the corner. Most prominent of all was the massive tree at the front of the painting, which kid-Dipper was focused intently on.
“Well, painting seems normal enough,” said Ford, voicing Stan’s own thoughts out loud.
“Yeah, but this was the only thing he painted, ever. Every artwork of his was the exact same for like, five years straight.” Mabel flipped a bit more, then stopped. “See?”
The picture showed Dipper, alone this time, laying on the floor with a box of crayons next to him. Sure enough, he was drawing the exact same picture as before.
“It was always the exact same,” said Mabel. “Two hills, three clouds, always with the same number of bumps. The sun was always in the right corner, it couldn’t be in the left, and the tree always had two branches.”
“That hardly seems out of the ordinary,” said Ford. “Maybe it was the only thing he knew how to draw.”
“Five years, Grunkle Ford,” Mabel stressed. “And he’d start screaming if people made him draw anything different.”
“Screaming?” Stan’s brow furrowed.
“He got in trouble for it at school all the time. Eventually the teachers gave up and let him draw whatever he wanted to. He even made it out of macaroni one time. He didn’t stop until he was like nine or something.”
“Yes, but… screaming? Over a drawing?” Ford stressed.
Mabel shrugged. “Like I said, he was a weird kid.”
The sound of approaching footsteps caught Stan’s attention. He looked up to see Dipper standing in the doorway, looking put off. “What do you mean, I was a weird kid?”
“Dipper! We were just talking about all your weird games you used to play.”
Dipper crossed his arms. “They weren’t weird. You just don’t understand fun.”
“Fun is pretending to be spies with your friends and playing soccer and drawing stuff that isn’t the same thing over and over,” said Mabel.
“It is a little peculiar,” Ford added. “I don’t understand how one derives enjoyment from lining up books and making messes.”
“What? Not you too,” Dipper groaned. “Grunkle Stan, back me up here.”
Stan shook his head. “Nah, you’re on your own here, kiddo.”
“Oh come on. You guys must have had weird games, too,” Dipper protested. “Mabel, you used to make me pretend I was a unicorn.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about children,” said Ford, “but I would guess that such behavior is developmentally appropriate for a young girl.”
“You’re just mad I made you wear the horn.” Mabel stuck her tongue out at him.
Dipper huffed. “Grunkle Stan, you and Grunkle Ford must have done weird things as kids, right?”
“I mean, yeah,” said Stan, “but it was more like making inedible soup out of plants and pretending we were from the IRS.”
Ford made a noncommittal noise. Stan turned to look at him. “I don’t know, Stanley. I mean, maybe some of the things I did were… odd.”
“Whaddya mean? You were normal enough.”
Ford frowned. “Is disassembling and reassembling all of my belongings considered ‘strange?’ I used to do that as a child.”
“Absolutely,” said Dipper.
“Well, you’re uber-smart, Grunkle Ford,” said Mabel. “It makes sense why you’d do that.”
“I don’t remember you doing that,” Stan said.
Ford shook his head. “I did it when I was alone. Dad used to scold me for it, said I was wasting money by breaking everything.”
“Huh. Guess my memory must be going.”
“You know, Dipper, I believe I may understand the appeal of lining things up. It’s coming back to me now. I remember I used to sort all of the parts into piles, and then pick out the necessary pieces to reassemble the items. It’s not the same as lining up books, but it’s the same principle.”
“See, Mabel? I’m not the only weird one here!”
“So you admit you’re weird!”
“Was! I was weird. Past tense. Totally different. I’m perfectly normal now.”
“That’s a load of baloney and you know it, Dips.”
Stan and Ford exchanged amused glances, any concern long forgotten as they listened to the kids bicker. It wasn’t important now. Concern was something they could deal with later. For now, Stan was content to pluck the photo album from Mabel’s hands and continue to flip through it, Ford peering over his shoulder as he went.