Just a Growing Boy

I recognized him as a kid from the neighborhood--Brandon Foster.The giant boy's right hand reached down to grab me;gargantuan fingers held me tightly enough so I couldn't get away, but fortunately not tight enough to crush me!Brandon drew his hand up near his face--by now I was a good 20 feet or so over the roof of the house, and I tried not to look down..."Hey,put me down...OK?," I pleaded. "Come on, I've never done anything to you."

"Just takin' you for a ride,Bob," was his reply. The boy's face loomed above me, 12 times its normal size. He brushed up against my house and I could hear crashing inside.Oh no! My computer! My TV! "Oops," he laughed. The voice was the prepubescent sort you'd expect from a kid his age, only most kids his age were a good foot and a half shorter than me...not 9 times my size and many, many times my weight!His clothes were also amplified in size, as I noticed his T-shirt seemed as big as a circus tent.

We went out to the street where Brandon decided to have a little fun.I looked down for a second and saw a car (not mine, thankfully) next to one of his feet. The sneakered right foot came down and crushed it, beneath the boy's tons of weight.

I knew I was in no position to lecture him, but I asked why he stepped on the car. "Wouldn't you?," he laughed. "C'mon, if you were this big you'd wanna have fun too, wouldn't ya?"
Hmm,maybe so...but it still wasn't right.We began walking toward the Little League field.Brandon was a Little Leaguer and as it turned out his team was supposed to play that day at noon.Cars were entering the parking lot, with moms and dads dropping off their sons. Suddenly, the gigantic figure of a 55-foot eleven-year-old appeared on the field; kids and parents alike were astonished and fearful-- some fleeing, others too dumbstruck to move.

It's Brandon!, several of them yelled.
Brandon sat down on the field and put me down. Some of the kids moved closer to him--he may be a giant,but he was their pal--surely he wouldn't hurt them! But one kid wasn't so sure...Connor Brewer started to back away cautiously as giant Brandon's hand moved closer toward him.The boy turned to run; Brandon put one of his hands ahead of the boy and extended his index finger. The boy tripped over the giant boy's finger and fell on the ground. "Two minutes for tripping-- no wait, that's hockey!," laughed Brandon.Connor got up and tried not to cry. "Don't hurt me," he pleaded, only to see Brandon smile down at him.

"Looks like it's my turn to kick your butt!" Brandon put his right hand next to Connor and prepared to flick Connor away like some fly who landed on his kitchen table.That was when I stepped in.

"C'mon, Brandon...you had your fun, but this is not right. Nobody deserves this."

The boy glared down at me and said, "He picked on me! I'm just getting even!" A broader smile crossed his face. "I could drop him from way up high...no, no wait---I could throw him hundreds of feet away!"

By now, most of the kids and adults had run off toward the parking lot to be whisked away and I envisioned him pursuing one or more of the cars, picking them up like toys. But he looked down at me instead and said, "What's it like to be so small!".
"You oughta know...you were just over four feet tall not so long ago.What happened to you anyway?"

"I invented a way to grow stuff--like me!It sorta looks like a toy gun but you can use it to grow stuff." He told me he had pulled the trigger (engaging a time-delay function), set the gun on a table and got in front of the beam it had emitted.
"I can't wait to see my parents!They'll flip when they see me now," said Brandon. "They're away for the weekend and one of my aunts is babysitting..."

Right then, I could hear a police siren and then I spotted a police car a block away, heading for us. What good could they do? Not much against a giant kid! The police car stopped right next to us and the officer got out. "Oh my God--Brandon?!?"
The officer knew him, and for a good reason. "Hey Uncle Barry! Look at me now!"
Officer Barry Foster gazed up at his nephew. "C'mon, I got a call from the coach of your team--he thought you were gonna raise hell or something.Look, just get yourself back to normal,OK? Don't cause any trouble!"

Brandon started laughing and I wondered what it would take to stop a giant like him.He set me down on the street and suddenly I heard him groan, as if he had a stomachache."What's happening?" he wondered aloud--and Barry and I watched in amazement as Brandon shrank before our eyes. He was back to just over 4 feet tall in a matter of seconds.He'd been a giant but was now no taller than my elbows.

"Looks like that thing you invented is a little imperfect," I said. "It just grows things temporarily."
"Well, so much for the terrifying giant," said Brandon's Uncle Barry.And he looked at me as if to say, I hope he doesn't use that device again...But somehow I knew he would...

I had seen monster movies before but never thought a giant monster would really exist. Or that one would attack my peaceful New York state town. But you never know what sort of stuff is being worked on in the biotech places around here. Sometimes an experiment can go haywire, which is probably what happened here.

I heard on the radio that a giant monster who looked like a wolf was spotted a couple towns away. This isn't April Fool's Day, I thought. It was no prank. And when I put on the TV and a local station's traffic helicopter got some live footage of the giant wolf, I knew it was real. And I knew what had to be done. 11-year-old Brandon Foster to the rescue!

He still had the growing device. I ran over to his house and he must have been thinking the same thing I was, as he ran out and told me what he saw on TV.

"I can fight it, Bob! I can grow to his size and fight it!"

"Can that thing shrink stuff? Maybe we can just shrink the monster."

"No, it only grows stuff...for awhile. Remember how I got back to normal?" Hmm; if he or I could grow just long enough to fight the monster, then get back to normal...Well, Brandon got his enlarger and, since he was volunteering, had me point it at him. He soon had grown to 55 feet tall again!

The giant wolf had arrived in the downtown of my small town and people fled in terror! It was probably 70 feet tall on its hind legs (given Brandon's size-- 15 feet shorter, battling him would be like an 11 year old trying to beat up an adult. The odds were against us.

Giant paws squashed cars and knocked over gas pumps. With his gigantic forepaw, the giant wolf smashed into a pizza shop, horrifying the people inside as glass shattered and a titanic paw reached for them. By this time Brandon and I were in the area-- I kept firing the "growing gun" at him but he couldn't grow any bigger than 55 feet.

It was reduced to rubble, as a 55-foot, very heavy boy lay amongst the bricks. Suddenly a flash of grey came at me--in the process of throwing Brandon, the wolf's tail moved right at me and I was thrown several yards away. Fortunately it was trash day and someone had an old mattress in front of their house. I landed on it and was not seriously hurt.

Brandon got up to face the wolf again. By this time the wolf got down on all fours to better terrify what few people were left in the area. One man fled the pizza shop and the wolf extended his paw down upon him, pinning him to the ground. Brandon went over to the wolf and tackled him (the man under the wolf's paw took that opportunity to escape) and Brandon and the giant wolf rolled around in the street grappling each other.

I grabbed the growing gun and asked someone to point it at me. It didn't work. A fine time for the thing to break down! I looked over and saw the wolf was now on top of Brandon, thrusting his weight down on him. But Brandon started punching away at the wolf and then suddenly HE was on top, smacking the giant animal in his head. One punch must have worked because it knocked the wolf out!

We were saved! People streamed back into the area and applauded him. One of Brandon's sneakers had flown off and a guy helped me pick it up (it was 9 feet long and must have weighed 100 pounds!) and carry it over to him.

Brandon had indeed saved us. There was no telling how much damage that giant wolf could have done, in addition to what he already HAD done. But curiously, as we looked over to the unconscious creature, we noticed it getting smaller. Soon it was back to about three and a half feet long. Brandon, too, got back to his normal size (again, his growing effect wore off after awhile). We found out later the wolf was being used in experiments and somehow it had grown to 70 feet tall-- but the biotech company doing the experiment was glad to see that the growth was not permanent.

Brandon and I walked back to our neighborhood.
"I gotta fix this--it doesn't always work."
For once, this time I'm glad it DID work. Brandon had grown himself again, and this time he was a hero.

© 2001 Bob Nelson