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Lucky Little

I remember like it was yesterday one summer continued...

... playing in the back yard with my brother Boyd. It was the summer before I started going to school for the first time. He was 10 and I was about 6. We had a great time. We would run and play and wrestle around, jump through the sprinkler then roll around in the dirt until we were both covered in mud. Life was all laughter and play. We loved our mom and dad and they loved us. Our dad was our knight in shining armor all dressed up with his badges and patches, handcuffs and pistol. Our mom just loved to laugh so we would always be putting on some act or just being silly to get her laughing. There’s just a joyous twinkle in her eyes when she gets to laughing. Those were great days. Even though we didn’t have much there was plenty of love in the house. Me and Boyd got along just like 2 brothers should get along, our mom and dad kissed and hugged each other all the time, they kissed and hugged us all the time and everybody said I love you to each other all the time, I mean all the time. Many times over the years I have wished that time would have stopped right then. But then I guess most kids would probably say the same thing at the end summer when it’s time to go back to school. We lived in a pretty tough neighborhood as it was. Being separated from my big brother for an entire day of school made it 10X worse. My first day to go to school was one I’ll never forget. Even though my memory is so sharp, that whole 1st day of school experience has escaped me except the incident in the hall. I couldn’t wait to see Boyd and start blabbering on about how I love school, and the bathrooms are so big, and my teacher is so nice and so pretty, and it’s a beautiful day for our walk home down the trail beside the bayou and…. So I see him down at the other end of the hall and I want to shout his name but I know that wouldn’t be cool so I bite my lip…there are a few boys around him that I’m thinking are his friends, because he is so great, I know, he’s my big brother. But then they start pushing him, hard, into the wall. I see him putting his arms up to protect himself like he does when we play fight, but the one boys punches him really hard, between his arms right in the middle of his chest, knocking him back into the wall again. Now I’m steaming mad and pushing through kids to get to him….when BAM, Boyd punches the kid right on the chin and knocks him to the ground. Boyd yells like a parent, “You better leave me alone”! I’d never seen him so angry. I’d never seen him hit so hard! My anger had turned to joy! I was smiling ear to ear so proud of Boyd. Some kids clapped and some kids laughed. But it was the one girl that was just left and to the back of me that I heard say to her friend,” They adopted, see them two, they brothers, they don’t look nothin’ like each other, you see that, they momma done gave them away”. It seemed like the whole hallway packed full of kids just went into slow motion. Even as a 6 year old it just all started to come together, not all the way, I was only 6. Why do I have brown hair, brown eyes and get a tan and Boyd has red hair, blue eyes, freckles and gets sun burned? What is adopted? What momma gave who them away? Why did she say that word, adopted, so ugly sounding? Well, I wasn’t going to let some ugly mouth girl steal my joy. My brother just punched a kid out. That’s my big brother everybody! But I was going to get to the bottom of all this adopted thing when I got home.