Kid Time In the neighborhood

    The boy walking the sidewalk in front of me is tossing a banana into the air and catching it as he walks. It could be a baseball, a football. a soccer ball, a stone or a pencil. Boys toss things into the air, catch them, and feel good with the world as it is. Along the way, he stops at a slightly leaking hose that has been repaired before with wire that has become rusted and no longer solves the problem. He kneels down and inspects the water problem, holds the banana alongside the hose as if it would make a splint. Boys like to fix things. I pass and continue down the sidewalk on my way to the Colonial Zone. A leaky hose is a problem we can solve in a world leaking problems. For now, throwing and catching is mostly what is on this boy’s mind Girls will change his equations, in a few years, and his chalkboard will look like Einstein had a hallucination. Throwing and catching brings back some of my happiest times.