A story from my childhood
I believe that I wasn't quite 10. Maybe 8 years old.
My family lives in a house in the northwest part of Lewistown; it's clearly not the richer portion of town, but my street is clean. At this point, it was still gravel roads in that section of town--I don't even think it was paved until either right before or after I left for college. I still miss driving on gravel roads, though they can be hell for your car's paint job. But clean asphalt has a hushed and quiet character that doesn't quite live up to the grind and crunch under your tires.
Or, since I was about 8 years old, your shoes.
A few blocks away, at the corner of 3rd and Evelyn, is Hawthorne Park. It was always my least favorite park, but I think that Kiwanis just had better slides and swings, and Simms Park had Grandma and Grampa nearby. If I'd been into baseball, though, it would have been Hawthorne.
It was summer, maybe late spring. My sister, Lindsey, and I were playing around at the park, and it was probably around 9 in the morning or so. There is a beauty to Lewistown in the spring time--and I have seen many moments of wonder on a Boston spring day, when the weather is perfect and the responsibilities are far away--that is unmatchable. Lewistown, on a late spring day, in the early morning, is even more lovely than that.
If I were pining for the days of my youth, this would be possibly more believable.
It's tough to remember details from almost twenty years ago. What I do remember is that Lindsey fell. It was nothing major--she probably just tripped and bumped her knee. (And it wasn't me! I swear!) And then she started screaming and crying.
My eight-year-old brain did what any other eight-year-old brain would do: panicked. I started to run home, down Evelyn Street, but then found a man on the street, less than a block away, who was doing something in his front yard. Jabbering something about my sister being hurt, I asked if he could help me out. When he said yes, I bolted back to the park, grabbed my sister, and then brought her to this strange man's house.
Seeing the scratch on her knee, he brought us inside, and sat us down while he dug around and found a band-aid for Lindsey. While he did this, his Super Nintendo caught my eye; I am hoping that I was polite enough to ask if I could play. This wasn't out of character for me at all, since I had virtually no exposure to video games at that point.
The man's name was Mickey, oddly enough. I am pretty sure that we played a Disney-based game.
My sister and I hung out at Mickey's house for probably no longer than 40 minutes or so, talking to him and playing video games. Eventually, I remembered that we had parents, and I told Mickey that we should probably go. We thanked him profusely for the band-aid and for being nice, and then went back home.
Understandably, my mother was very concerned when I told her where we'd been. My being eight years old, though, simply meant that I had no idea why going to a strange man's house and disappearing for an hour without telling her was such a bad thing. Mickey was nice, and Lindsey needed a band-aid.
Almost twenty years later, my ability to trust is virtually identical.
My family lives in a house in the northwest part of Lewistown; it's clearly not the richer portion of town, but my street is clean. At this point, it was still gravel roads in that section of town--I don't even think it was paved until either right before or after I left for college. I still miss driving on gravel roads, though they can be hell for your car's paint job. But clean asphalt has a hushed and quiet character that doesn't quite live up to the grind and crunch under your tires.
Or, since I was about 8 years old, your shoes.
A few blocks away, at the corner of 3rd and Evelyn, is Hawthorne Park. It was always my least favorite park, but I think that Kiwanis just had better slides and swings, and Simms Park had Grandma and Grampa nearby. If I'd been into baseball, though, it would have been Hawthorne.
It was summer, maybe late spring. My sister, Lindsey, and I were playing around at the park, and it was probably around 9 in the morning or so. There is a beauty to Lewistown in the spring time--and I have seen many moments of wonder on a Boston spring day, when the weather is perfect and the responsibilities are far away--that is unmatchable. Lewistown, on a late spring day, in the early morning, is even more lovely than that.
If I were pining for the days of my youth, this would be possibly more believable.
It's tough to remember details from almost twenty years ago. What I do remember is that Lindsey fell. It was nothing major--she probably just tripped and bumped her knee. (And it wasn't me! I swear!) And then she started screaming and crying.
My eight-year-old brain did what any other eight-year-old brain would do: panicked. I started to run home, down Evelyn Street, but then found a man on the street, less than a block away, who was doing something in his front yard. Jabbering something about my sister being hurt, I asked if he could help me out. When he said yes, I bolted back to the park, grabbed my sister, and then brought her to this strange man's house.
Seeing the scratch on her knee, he brought us inside, and sat us down while he dug around and found a band-aid for Lindsey. While he did this, his Super Nintendo caught my eye; I am hoping that I was polite enough to ask if I could play. This wasn't out of character for me at all, since I had virtually no exposure to video games at that point.
The man's name was Mickey, oddly enough. I am pretty sure that we played a Disney-based game.
My sister and I hung out at Mickey's house for probably no longer than 40 minutes or so, talking to him and playing video games. Eventually, I remembered that we had parents, and I told Mickey that we should probably go. We thanked him profusely for the band-aid and for being nice, and then went back home.
Understandably, my mother was very concerned when I told her where we'd been. My being eight years old, though, simply meant that I had no idea why going to a strange man's house and disappearing for an hour without telling her was such a bad thing. Mickey was nice, and Lindsey needed a band-aid.
Almost twenty years later, my ability to trust is virtually identical.