I’m a big believer that between the ages of birth and twelve years old, there are really over nine hundred real years inside there. Maybe not nine hundred years. But it seems like time has such a different passage. From the age that it took me to be sixteen, now I realize that was seventeen years ago and I’ve been rambling across this dusty bowl for much longer that any of us would like to admit.
The house I grew up in was on a hill. A big hill, higher than anything else in town. Above our house was another hill, but that was in the next town. This makes the last statement not a lie.
Next to the house I grew up in lived Mr. Johnson. His wife had died long before I was even born. He used to have lady callers, at one point, but it seemed that that was long ago, as well. He had settled into the role of small town widower, kindly old man, whichever. He had a really cute dog.
And looking back, I’d prefer to remember things like they were, when he walked his dog and all the kids played with it. This was before the time that the dog had to be taken away. This was before the time that he drunkenly steered his station wagon into every mailbox and garage door on the block.
I’d like to remember his well-manicured lawn. Not the lawn it became, the lawn that everyone on the block would talk about or just stare at and shake their heads.
I didn’t grow up with any other kids. Maybe this informs my misanthropy. Maybe I just relate better to old people. Maybe I’d like to remember the world as I saw it through seven year old eyes instead of growing up and seeing something fall apart across the street when I looked up the hill.
Sooner or later, they took him away, just like they took away his dog. And someone else lives there now. I can’t even look at his house.
Photo - N
Words - S
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