Dog Years
Imagine if you lived your life in the same span a dog does. 10 to 15 years instead of 80 or 90? How would that affect the choices you made, and the lives you touched?
Listen to “Dog Years” and more on the Bedtime Stories for Insomniacs fiction podcast, available on all podcast apps and Audible. Visit BedtimeStories.studio for more information.
The chocolate lab paced restlessly, then returned to the cardboard box lined with an old beach towel in one corner of the laundry room.
Sarah kneeled down and offered a bowl of food to the dog, but she sniffed at it and turned away, resting her chin on her paws.
The vet had told Sarah such behavior was common for a dog in labor.
“Oh, Karma, I wish you could tell me what you needed,” Sarah said as she gently ran her hand down the dog’s back.
Sarah stood up, then felt something wet running down her leg.
It couldn’t be. She wasn’t due for another four weeks.
Sarah placed a hand over her rounded belly and felt the child within kick. “Sorry, Karma. I’m afraid you’re going to be on your own.”
The dog answered with a plaintive whine.
Sarah carefully walked through the kitchen and living room to her bedroom, where her phone was charging on the night table. She tapped on the icon for Meredith, her midwife.
It seemed to ring forever, but then Meredith answered.
“Hi, Sarah. What’s up?”
“It’s time. My water broke,” Sarah said.
“Where are you?” Meredith asked, suddenly all business.
“At home. In my bedroom.”
“All right, I’ll be right there. Do you want me to call Will?”
“No, I can do it. Meredith, should I go to the hospital? He’s nearly a month early.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine. I’ll make sure Dr. Brady is aware of your situation, but sometimes they just want to come out early.”
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay.”
“You got this! I’ll see you soon.”
Sarah hung up and placed a call to her husband.
“Sarah?”
“It’s time, Will. He’s coming early.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
They had been preparing for this day for months. Sarah had always wanted to have a natural birth at home, but now that it was happening, she started second guessing everything.
A contraction hit and she sat herself on the edge of the bed until it passed, then lied down, phone in hand, waiting.
Benji Fitzgerald arrived after only three hours of labor. He was perfect, loud and nearly nine pounds. Meredith remarked how big he was for eight months, but assured Sarah and Will that their son was healthy and whole.
“What’s that noise?” Meredith asked after she laid the swaddled infant in Sarah’s arms.
Will turned his head from side to side. “What noise?”
“I hear it, too,” Sarah said. Then she realized what it was. “Karma! Will, she’s in the laundry room. Go see if she’s okay.”
Will nodded, gave his son a gentle kiss on the top of his surprisingly hairy head, and raced to the other side of the house.
When he returned, he held a tiny, naked puppy in his palms, its eyes squeezed shut. He showed it to Sarah.
It mewed softly.
“How many are there?”
“Just the one,” Will reported. “A boy.”
“One?” Sarah stroked the puppy’s head with the tip of her finger.
“You have to keep it,” Meredith suggested. “It has the same birthday as Benji.”
Sarah looked at Will, and he nodded his agreement. “I’ll bet they’ll be best friends.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Dr. Brady said. “But are you sure this is your son?”
The question surprised Sarah.
“Of course we’re sure,” Will answered.
“Why would you ask?” Sarah wanted to know.
“Well, he’s rather large for his age. 99th percentile. Probably 99.99th percentile for length and weight.”
“Is there something wrong with him?”
“No, he’s perfectly healthy, just… well, if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was at least six months old.”
It had been only twenty-nine days since Benji was born. Sarah had noticed he was gaining weight, but thought little of it since he started out as a big baby.
“And developmentally, he’s way ahead of where he should be. Does he roll over on his own?”
“Yes,” Sara confirmed.
“Uses his hands to support himself?”
“What’s going on, Doctor,” Will asked.
“I’m not sure. You know that expression, ‘they grow up so fast’? Well, Benji seems to be doing just that.”
After two months, Benji was over twenty pounds, two and a half feet tall and walking.
Karma’s puppy — they had named him Button, as in cute as a — was starting to explore the house on wobbly legs as well.
Boy and dog were becoming fast friends, playing together and even sharing toys.
By five months, they both were running around the backyard.
It was around then that Sarah’s father, who had driven down from Spokane to visit, remarked, “The boy’s growing as fast as the pup. Must be living in dog years.”
Will spent countless hours researching any other cases like Benji’s on the internet. He saw the images of children with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, in which the afflicted age rapidly. But his son didn’t resemble the photographs of kids with that disorder. They looked like tiny old men and women.
Benji was growing up normally, just very fast. And judging by the rate he was achieving growth and developmental milestones, it was about seven times quicker than a normal child.
Dog years.
He also seemed to learn quickly as well. He was speaking in full sentences and even started reading on his own by the time he was eight months old.
“Before he’s old enough for kindergarten, he’ll be ready for college,” Sarah remarked.
It was obvious they needed to home school Benji. Sarah took on the challenge and led Benji through almost the entire elementary school and junior high curriculum in a year.
By the time he was two years old, Benji was almost as tall as his mother and weighed a hundred and twenty pounds.
One evening, he sat his parents down in the living room.
Button took up his usual position at his feet. The two of them had become inseparable.
“Mom, Dad,” he said in a voice that was just starting to crack. “I want to go to high school.”
High school? How many two year olds went to high school?
“You know you can’t go to school with other kids,” Sarah told him. “You’d be bored out of your mind. You learn so fast.”
“I know,” Benji said. “But I looked into it. The local high school is on a quarter system. I could do my freshman classes the first quarter, sophomore the second and graduate by the end of the year.”
“Why?” Will asked his son. “You’re doing so well in your studies with Mom.”
Button sat up, put his chin on Benji’s knee.
The boy rewarded his dog with a scratch behind the ears. “I want to have friends.”
High school was a lot more challenging that Benji expected. But not academically.
He was on an independent study plan and worked through the material so much faster than his transient peers that he never had a chance to form any bonds with them.
Then he discovered the band.
The ensemble was made up of kids from all grades. He took up the oboe since the band director was eager for someone to fill in that section.
In the first quarter, they mostly prepared for and performed at the football games. Which gave Benji a chance to master the instrument, since it wasn’t a big part of the marches and pop tunes they played. By the time the winter quarter rolled around, he was very adept, and even had a solo at the Christmas concert.
And it was in the band where he met Margaret.
She was a senior, played the clarinet, and sat next to Benji in the semi-circle of the practice room. They didn’t normally talk much, but one day as they were packing up their instruments, Margaret said to him, “You’re taller than me.”
Benji turned and looked at the girl. She was, at least in his eyes, beautiful. Short red hair sprung wildly from her head. Her light blue eyes sparkled above a splash of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. His mouth went dry. He was the smartest kid in the school. Why did he sound so dumb?
“You weren’t at the beginning of the quarter,” she said. “I was taller than you then.”
“Growth spurt,” he explained. It was his standard reply to anyone who noticed his accelerated development.
“That’s a pretty big growth spurt,” she remarked.
Benji shrugged.
“Do you want to hang out sometime?” Margaret asked.
Benji just stared at her, unable to formulate a response. He thought about girls, of course, and had developed a crush on Margaret almost from the moment he first saw her.
His father had explained that most boys had years to adjust to the changes his body was going through, and he might find himself in situations that he wasn’t ready for.
Especially when it came to girls.
“If you don’t want to, it’s fine,” Margaret said after a moment of silence. She turned away to finish disassembling her clarinet.
“No, I do,” Benji blurted. “I would love to — I mean, like to — I mean, yes.”
Margaret smiled, charmed by his awkwardness. “Cool. Give me your phone. I’ll put in my number.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Benji confessed. “But I can remember it if you tell me.”
“Okay.” She recited the numbers and Benji echoed them back. “So, you’ll call me?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you.”
“Great.”
Benji watched her walk away. When she got to the door, she turned back and smiled.
The night of the prom was more stressful for Sarah and Will than Benji. He put on in his rented tuxedo — powder blue, to match Margaret’s dress — and stood by patiently while his parents took endless photos of him. Pictures by himself, with each of them, then another that Will engineered with all three of them.
All four of them, actually. Button found a way to be in every shot.
“You look so handsome,” his mother swooned.
“No drinking,” his father warned. “When will you be home?”
Benji shrugged. “Margaret wants to go to some party afterwards.”
“No parties,” Will said.
Sarah glared at her husband. “Says the man who kept me out till four in the morning at our prom.”
“That was different.”
“Yes, it was. You didn’t have a cell phone to call your parents if anything happened.”
Benji held up the phone his parents had bought him shortly after he started dating Margaret. “I’ll be fine, Dad. Don’t worry.”
But Will did worry. He couldn’t help thinking Benji wasn’t even three years old and was going to be out after midnight. And would likely find himself in unfamiliar and tempting situations.
Benji’s phone dinged. It was an alert that his Uber Black car was waiting to take him to Margaret’s house, then to the dance.
“Tell Margaret’s mom to send me any pictures she takes,” Sarah said, giving her son a kiss on the cheek.
“Have a good time, son — but not too good.” Will shook Benji’s hand, and with the other — out of view of Sarah — he slipped something into his son’s jacket pocket.
“I gotta go,” Benji said as he dashed out of the house to the waiting car.
Benji found the whole prom experience somewhat uncomfortable. The music was too loud, the lights too dim, and there was nowhere to sit. He swayed with Margaret for all the slow dances, then shuffled his feet for the fast ones while she tried to teach him various moves.
Later, they went to an after party at Margaret’s friend’s house.
There was alcohol there, but Benji and Margaret declined in favor of sodas. They sat side by side while Margaret and her friends talked about their college plans.
“Where are you going?” someone asked Benji.
“He’s taking a gap year,” Margaret answered for him.
“That is so cool,” one of the other kids said. “I wish my parents would let me do that.”
The gap year was a dodge to such questions Benji had come up with on his own. He had considered applying to colleges, but his unorthodox curriculum made it difficult for him to meet the application deadlines. He could apply for a winter admission somewhere, but by the time he started, he would be physically as old as the students who were graduating. So, college was likely not in his future — at least not in any way he could imagine at the moment.
At some point, Margaret led Benji into an empty guest room and closed the door. She pulled him in for a kiss.
A long, slow kiss.
They had kissed before, many times, and Benji really enjoyed making out with her. They’d even tentatively explored each other’s bodies over their clothing.
But this kiss was different.
Margaret slipped her fingers into the thick hair at the back of his head, pulling him close, pressing her body tight against his.
“Do you want to?” She whispered in his ear.
“Want to what?”
Margaret pulled back, locking eyes with Benji, then glanced over at the bed.
Benji nodded enthusiastically.
Get Rich Hosek’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
He hadn’t had the nerve to tell her, but he was in love with Margaret. In that moment, although they were the proverbial ships passing in the night in terms of their ages, he wanted nothing more than to express that love.
“Do you have a condom?”
Benji shook his head.
“Oh,” she said, a little disappointed. “Well, we can still — ”
Then Benji remembered his father slipping something into his pocket. He reached in and pulled out a square foil package with something circular inside.
Margaret smiled.
Benji found he had a passion for computers. He had used them at home and in high school, but programming had not been part of his studies. Once he discovered he could write programs and apps and websites to do almost anything, he dove headlong into the field.
And even better, he didn’t need a college degree to be successful or get a job. He worked remote, freelance, changing employers every few months so no one would catch on to his condition.
Shortly after she went off to college, Benji got an email from Margaret explaining that she had met a boy. He was confused and showed it to his parents, trying to make sense of it.
“It’s a Dear John letter,” his father explained. “She’s breaking up with you.”
“Oh,” Benji said. He was disappointed, but then again, what did he expect? That Margaret and he would get married? That would be impossible. When she was ready to have children, he would be ready to retire. What kind of life could they have together?
“I’m sorry, Benji,” Sarah said.
Button offered his condolences as well.
Benji buried himself in his work.
The following spring, Benji was living on his own. He had convinced his parents that he was “old enough” to have his own place. They had to put their names on the lease since he was only three and a half years old, but other than that, it was his.
Well, his and Button’s.
The dog came with him, of course, the two of them in the prime of their lives.
One day in mid June, there was a knock at his door.
He opened it to find Margaret standing there.
She looked at him, confused. “I’m sorry. I was looking for a friend of mine.”
Benji didn’t know what to say. To her, he looked like a man in his mid twenties, but she was still a fresh-faced teenager.
She smiled and turned away, but then stopped and looked at him again.
Closer.
“Benji?”
He froze, like that day in band class when she first asked him out.
“Is that you?”
Button came to the door and jumped up on Margaret, glad to see her again.
“Hi, Margaret,” Benji said.
She looked down at the dog, then back at Benji’s face. “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you should come in.”
Margaret listened attentively as Benji explained his condition.
“That makes sense,” she said. “I mean, ‘growth spurt’ didn’t quite cover how much you grew my senior year.” Then she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, I went to the prom with a two-year-old.” She gasped. “I did it with — ”
“It’s not like that,” Benji assured her. “You can’t think of me in terms of calendar years.” He reached out to stroke Button, who was reclining on the couch beside him. “Think of it as dog years.”
“Dog years?”
“Yeah, you know how they say dogs age seven times faster than people? That’s what it’s like for me.”
“But how?”
“No one’s been able to explain it. Dozens of doctors have done thousands of tests. They don’t think it’s genetic, but they can’t rule it out, either. I’m a medical mystery.”
“How come you’re not famous?”
“The doctors all signed an agreement that they wouldn’t publish anything about me until…”
He didn’t want to say the words out loud.
“Until you’re dead,” Margaret finished. “Oh, Benji.” She grabbed him in a hug.
He wrapped her arms around her and held her tight, burying his face in her hair.
Then she pulled back and smiled, even though there were tears streaming down her freckled cheeks. “I came by to find you because, well, you know that boy I was seeing? He turned out to be a real jerk. And I thought we could spend the summer together.”
“I’m sorry,” Benji said.
“Why? Don’t you want to be my boyfriend?”
He was confused. “But I’m like twenty-five now.”
“And I’ll be twenty in August. That’s not a big difference.”
“But it’ll get bigger.”
Margaret shook her head. “I’m not going to think about that. I want to spend the summer making all my friends gossip about the older boy I’m dating.”
“Are you sure?”
Margaret answered with a kiss.
The summer passed quickly. Benji cut back on his work to spend time with Margaret. They spent their days doing all the things a young couple liked to do, and their evenings doing the same.
When it came time for Margaret to head back to college, Benji took her to their favorite spot. A bluff overlooking the lake. He made a picnic, and he and Margaret and Button spent the afternoon just laying in the grass and tossing a Frisbee for Button to chase.
As dusk drew near, they huddled together under a blanket.
“This has been the best summer ever,” he told her.
“You mean in all the four years you’ve been alive?”
They laughed. “Next summer I’ll be essentially thirty-two. You’ll turn a lot more heads walking down the street with me with that big of an age difference.”
“I don’t care,” Margaret said, snuggling closer.
“And the summer after that I’ll be nearly forty. When you graduate, I’ll be middle-aged.”
She looked up at him, afraid of what he’d say next.
“You need to find someone you can have a life with. Someone who will grow old with you, not ahead of you.”
She pushed away. “Are you breaking up with me?” she asked, tears streaming
“It’s for the best. I can’t — ”
Before he could finish, Margaret stood up. “I love you, Benji Fitzgerald. You can push me aside, but you’ll never make me stop loving you.”
Then she turned and ran across the field toward her car.
A tear wetted the corner of Benji’s eye.
“I love you, too, Margaret,” he said to the wind.
He wrote to Margaret, but she never replied.
So, instead, Benji devoted himself to his work.
He came up with an idea for an app that would allow families to consolidate disparate collections of photos, sort them chronologically, and create visual stories of each family member’s life, told from the perspectives of all their loved ones.
Venture Capitalists rushed to invest in his company.
Benji was a millionaire before his fifth birthday.
He developed other products and invested in other ideas he thought had potential.
Yet no one really knew who he was. He hid behind his corporate identity, Button Technology. He often wondered what people would think if they knew they were investing in a company created by someone who was likely younger than the car they drove.
His reclusiveness added to his allure. He used the fortune he accumulated to start various charities and fund research into genetic diseases.
Still, despite his resources, he was unable to find a doctor or a scientist who could explain his own peculiar condition.
He was now older than his parents.
It was strange. They seemed sad that he was living so fast, growing older before their very eyes.
But to Benji, it felt completely normal. Life moved at the pace it was supposed to. Each day for his parents was seven for him, but they were such glorious days.
When he was ten, he walked away from his company, leaving it in the hands of the board of directors and the hotshot CEO they had found to replace him.
He was an old man now. Arthritis bent his joints, and he needed glasses to read.
Dr. Brady was still his doctor, but now he also saw a cardiologist and an urologist to address the various ailments that seemed to pop up almost monthly.
Runs through the park with Button were now replaced by slow, leisurely walks.
He read a lot.
And started writing.
He first tried his hand at science fiction, then mysteries. But after a while, he realized what he really wanted to write was the story of his life.
He had worked so hard to keep his circumstances secret — except, of course, from his parents, a bunch of doctors and Margaret — so that he could live as much of a normal life as he could.
But the closer he got to the end of it, the more he understood that his life wasn’t normal.
It was extraordinary.
It had truly been a wonderful life. He had learned so much, built things, shared his massive fortune with those in need, and seen all the wonders of the world.
And he had also — at least briefly — loved.
One day when he was walking Button downtown, he saw Margaret again. She was in her mid-twenties and still as beautiful as ever.
He spotted her across the street, sitting at a table outside an ice cream shop. He was now a gray-haired septuagenarian and wondered if she would still recognize him.
Before he could work up the courage to cross and say hello, a man and a young boy exited the shop, ice cream in hand. The man handed a cone to Margaret and gave her a quick kiss.
Benji was happy that she had found someone.
She looked his way, and their eyes met. Surely she didn’t recognize him. He was just another old man, out for an evening stroll with his dog.
But her glance lingered longer than it needed to.
And then she saw Button, panting at Benji’s side, and smiled.
He couldn’t be sure if she was smiling at him, or something her family said, but he smiled back regardless, then ambled on his way.
It was Button — or rather Button’s mother — who unlocked his empathy for his parents’ increasing despair. Karma had died a few years earlier.
Her pet’s passing devastated Sarah.
Now she and Will were facing the loss of their son. To them, like Karma, he had grown up and old in the blink of an eye. They would have to go on without him in their lives.
Benji could understand their sadness. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without Button, but he likely never would have to find out.
The old dog was hanging in there. Slowing down the same as Benji, but the two of them were still inseparable.
When Benji turned fourteen, he was the equivalent of ninety-eight years old. His hair had thinned to white wisps clinging to his mostly bald head. Cataracts had taken the sight in his right eye, and he needed a pharmacy of drugs to fall asleep, wake up and get through the day.
He allowed Sarah and Will to read his autobiography. They were so proud and urged him to send it to a publisher. He worried how it might disrupt their lives, how the media would chase them down and shove cameras and microphones in their faces.
“I can’t imagine anything that would make us prouder than be to known as the parents of Benjamin Fitzgerald,” his father told him.
So, he sent out the manuscript to some contacts he had through his old business, and it generated quite the bidding war. The book was published and became a bestseller.
Most, though, read it as fiction. Only those who personally knew him finally knew the truth.
His parents threw a grand birthday party. They all knew it was likely his last one.
The friends he had accumulated over the last decade or so — and even some of his surprised classmates from high school — were there. Doctors, teachers, titans of industry. They all told him they had known he was special and were so impressed by what he had made of his brief life.
Margaret was there, too.
Along with her son.
“Hi, Benji,” she said.
The sound of her voice was magical.
“Hi, Margaret.” Benji looked at the boy clinging to her side. He had Margaret’s hair and freckles. “Who’s this?”
“This is Benjamin,” she told him.
He smiled. “You named him after me?”
Margaret reached out and took Benji’s bony hand into hers. “I named him after his father.”
His first thought was that she had married another man named Benjamin. But her smile told him differently.
“He wanted to meet you.”
“I read your book,” the boy said.
“You did? That’s a big book for a little kid like you.”
“I’m not little, I’m ten.”
That declaration sent a wave of joy over Benji.
The boy looked like he was ten.
He hadn’t inherited his father’s condition.
He was just a regular kid.
“You’re ten, huh? That’s still pretty impressive.”
“I like to read.”
“Me, too,” Benji said, not realizing until that very moment just how truly happy a person could be.
That night, Benji lay in his bed with Button curled up at his feet. The two lifelong best friends, who had taken their first breaths together, did the same with their last ones.
