Scaling the Wall
2nd Saturday Prompt: childhood memory
I was never sure I could make it. Not until I had lifted myself off and swung one foot over that wall. Only then would I allow myself that tiny high of exultation.
We were a bunch of kids trying to build adventure into our evening play hours. Scaling the boundary wall and picking fruit off trees was the only way to do it. Most times we would get bored of the same old games and sports, the same old scrapes, and tears, the same old streets, and shops outside, the same old, the same old.
Scaling the wall meant being counted among the “in” kids, the cool kids, the fearless kids, the kids that could do things, make things happen, the kids who would get pulled into teams first, into staged performances first. Scaling the wall meant being a favorite.
Not being able to scale the wall meant the opposite.
Kids were so clear in their discriminatory ways; it was like a deterministic caste system methodically put in place. Winners and losers. Scaling the wall determined it all, and favor could arbitrarily change order depending on who performed well at the wall that day.
Kids could be mean, the meanest living beings many of us would ever encounter in our lives. Because at that young age, the kids hadn’t yet discovered the importance of…
