Mark's Pages
August 30, 2003:
Sunshine. Yellow-gold. The color of the sky, vibrant blue, desert blue.
Wet heat rises from newly-watered lawn. Water droplets on tree leaves. Tiny rust spots growing on the swingset, on the slide, where bolts hold thin cheap metal in place.
Children's voices. Water Wiggle©; Slip 'n' Slide©. They're having fun. Good for them.
They're not your friends. You don't want to be mean, but, truth is, you dislike them. They're stupid, slow, like little baby cows, uncreative, unable to invent new games or explore new rules or do anything too much they haven't done a million times exactly the same way.
The worst is their dependency. Without their adults they wouldn't know what to do. They'd sit and do nothing, probably.
At home your friends are as unsupervised as you would be if you were with them. What difference does it make? What is it about this summer which causes you to be singled out for unnecessary isolation?
Top of the slide. You read The Return of the King in one day, basically without budging from that spot.
The lady says, "I've never seen a child read as much as you."