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There Goes the Neighborhood
Kids and adults remember different things, that’s for sure. Recently my mother asked, “Remember Floyd Kadondik (or some other local yahoo from New Jersey that I hadn’t thought about in more than 30 years)?”
“No I don’t, why?”
To which my mother zinged me with, “Oh, I was speaking with Freida Schwartzsteiner and we were wondering what happened to Floyd. You two used to be such good friends!”
“He lived three blocks away and I only saw him in history class,” I replied. “The one time my friends played baseball with his friends, he tripped me on purpose and stepped on my ankle.”
“Oh,” my mother shrugged. “I always liked his parents.”
Those rose-colored glasses work both ways. For a good chunk of my preteen and early teen years, I hung with a small group of kids. That circle constricted considerably after I shifted from public to private school during eighth grade after a prolonged period of bullying. I gained one new friend, since everyone else was bussed from far-off communities. But several “I know you from class” acquaintances fell away.
One of the kids who didn’t fall away was Gary Levine [name changed to protect the innocent]. I don’t remember when I met Gary, but his family lived down the block and around the corner. He had a couple of younger sisters and I had a few…
