Left to my own devices

Recently I watched the movie Driveways , about a woman and her young son who travel to her sister's house in upstate New York. The sister has passed away, and the woman must sort through the belongings in her house and get it ready to go on the market. An old man lives next door, a Korean War vet (Brian Dennehy, in one of his last roles), and he and the boy befriend each other. That is much of the heart of the movie, and it reminded me of me when I was a kid. My knee-jerk recollection of childhood is that it was friendless, though that isn't accurate. There were Derrick, and Kyle (more than one), and a handful of others who I hung out with, rode bikes around town with, played outside with until the streetlights came on, etc. We had our fun. Those relationships weren't constant, however. I'm not sure if childhood friendships ever really are? The long stretches of loneliness in between friends, filled with self-doubt and the uncertainty of whether there would be another c...

Growing up on South Draper St. in Champaign, IL., I had the best bedroom a boy could wish for. With walls and trim painted in orange and beige, it was a fun little room. In the evenings and on the weekends I'd watch PBS on the small black & white TV situated across from the bed. On the bed, I'd sometimes build a fort and pretend I was defending it from an oncoming horde. A desk somehow fit in there, as well, and I'd put the small blue typewriter my parents gave me on it, and plunk-out short stories, or use it to interview my 3rd grade teacher for a writing project. Of everything in my childhood bedroom on Draper St., I think perhaps my favorite part of it was the window. This portal to the outside world was big enough for me to sit on the sill and take-in what was beyond, yet feel safe enough within the confines of the room itself. The window looked-out onto our back yard, where there was a tall Sycamore tree (so tall, in fact, that I could see it from the play...