NOT SINCE
Karen's little brother used to whine like a s t ick. He'd laugh way up high in his
nasal cavities
just to make her MAD. She'd hit him to stop but he'd get craZy and hysterical and cry
even worse than before. I didn't tell Karen so, but I suspected he was hyperactive. Karen called him a retard.
The retard would act up especially in the summertime, or maybe that's the way it seemed to me. I went to Karen's house to eat cheese grilled sandwiches but if we stayed around too long, her mom would make us play with him. We ended up outdoors, usually. Our subdivision was built on a filled-in swamp; there were lots of mosquitos, tadpoles and trilliums left around. Karen and I would spend our time in the unfinished lots, listening to bugs and checking the caked up mud. There was a lot of junk, too--nails, lumber, bulldozer tracks--the kids were warned about tetanus. But we already knew to look out for ourselves and to watch out for the crazy man with the messy hair who still lived in a house with his mother.
From these hours, I learned to appreciate the beautiful balance between industry and the natural world, the relationship between grace, decay and personality. Our neighborhood was new, but you could find Queen Anne's Lace growing up between cracks in the concrete. Is this wrong? Perhaps I am justifying a life wasted by electricity. Who can tell?