A Boy Just Like Me

      It was many years ago and some things seem to change very slowly. I made my way through the parked cars, enjoying the bright afternoon sun. The leaves were beginning to turn dull and fluttered against the crisp blue sky. Stretching the kinks out of my legs, I took a deep breath. My lungs screamed betrayal as the smell of burned cooking fat rode the cool September breeze from the dumpster across the parking lot.
      As I approached the drive-thru lane a young man carefully backed through the glass door and turned in my direction. The remains of a Value-meal box in his right hand, his left shoulder dipped downward toward the whining ball of flesh that he held firmly by the hand.
      “Come on now,” he pleaded, “You’ve got to stand up.”
      The boy’s rebellion reminded me of an outraged chimpanzee. Legs curled up into his stomach, he dangled at the end of his father’s arm. A vanilla complexion now scarlet against his long blonde hair, and with eyes closed in a grimace of wrinkles, he flailed against his father’s grip.
      His father continued in a calm clear voice, “Come on now, stand up like a big boy.”
      As if in a vision, there I was whirling in outrage against life with eyes locked tight against everything around me. Kicking and screaming against the firm hand of an unflinching world. And how I was so often like this little boy, with vision clenched behind a wall of anger, unable to grasp the depth of my sufferings.