Peyton C. Robinson

     Peyton C. Robinson was a peculiar 8-year-old boy. While the other children ran around playing sports and getting into fights, Peyton spent his time counting.

     He counted everything he could count. He counted the clouds in the air, he counted the trees on the sidewalk and he counted the mailboxes alongside the road.

     Sometimes he counted window panes and the number of steps leading to his neighbor’s houses. Other times he counted cracks in the pavement, or posts in a fence. When he felt like it, he’d count the roses on a bush, or the tiles on a roof. When he finished those, he counted leaves on trees, petals on flowers, bricks in walls.

     In the summer, he counted the sprays of water from a sprinkler, then the drops of water that fell from each spray. When they hit the ground, he counted the number of droplets that splashed out of each drop.

     If he looked closely enough, he counted the panes on the eyes of a fly. He counted the specs of dirt in an anthill. He counted the snowflakes on the driveway in the winter.

     If he could have looked closer, he would have counted the fibers that formed those snowflakes. He would have counted every individual groove in every spec of sand. Then he’d count the grooves that formed those grooves.

     He would count them all. And when he was done, he would count them again.

     All Peyton C. Robinson ever did was count. He never spoke and he never listened. He never moved, either. He just stood in the middle of the yard and counted, all day long. All night, too.

     It really freaked out the other kids.