A Corner of Our Mind That Never Grows Up

There is a delightfully brief window in childhood where we trust everyone and everything. We absorb all the images and sounds like little sponges; even the most strident settle into our heads bereft of the anger or pain that created them.[1]

Our view of the world remains optimistic, cheery, colorful, despite whatever input that goes into our brains.

I met a black boy at the YMCA when I was in Vernondale Elementary School in Erie, PA. Once a month I would stay after school and the bus would take a few of us to the downtown Y. We would play basketball and afterward eat popcorn and play foosball in the lobby. This boy didn't go to Vernondale, there were no black children at that school in those days. But we became friends and agreed we would grow up to be policemen and be partners.

Just like on TV.

Interracial buddy cop shows were new then.

We had no concept of race or time or the utter unlikelihood that this would happen.


Eventually we grow up into adults and do our best to be good parents, good neighbors, and good citizens, despite our kids' best efforts to drive us bananas, despite noisy neighbors, and despite the world doing its damnedest to blow itself up.

But in a corner of our mind that never grows up, there is a place where scents and sounds live, and if stirred, transport us briefly to the moment they became lodged there, perfect and happy and unchanged until we carry them to heaven, for if we take anything with us at all, we will take good memories.

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[1]
Such as sad songs, the sights and sounds of yesteryear's wars, elderly family members that we lose in childhood.

Started: 2012-04-27