DIALOGUE WITH DILEMMA OF TIME

23-11-77 "The Inhabitants of Our Street" cont.

My favorite Catholic was a Mongol child, John, who played happily with
my brother and myself. It was like moving away on a train of time and
progress while watching him stand still on the platform.

We watched with sadness as we moved away from him---to high school,
exams, university, while he stood still, locked in his own
limitations.

John aged physically, though, and he grappled confusedly with puberty,
beards, deep voice, pulling-erect-penis-out-of-pants for inspection,
out of curiosity....

When, later, we came home for college vacations, etc. we were always
greeted by the same warm smile, but it became harder and harder to
explain that we couldn't "come out to play just at this moment" or that
we weren't going to the store for sweets, but rather, going off to
matriculate for the coming university session.

John 's predictable solution to his railway-platform dilemma was to
latch on to a new breed, a new generation, of up-and-coming, street
children, i.e., kids, a few years younger than us; and he would stride
in phase with these kids, matching them step-for-step until the
inevitable, again, happened, and they caught the "train of time."

I was fond of that gentle, happy fellow and on my last visit home, I
had prickles on my neck watching a moustached, 39 year-old, making an
uncoordinated stab at swinging a bat and kicking a ball. I shudder at
his future.

Every single offspring of that street has passed through John on his
or her way to adulthood, in the same fashion that sons and daughters of
Aristrocratic families pass through and are comforted and helped by the
old-revered, family Nanny, before finally leaving her behind.

Mongols always die young, the books say. Or will John get old and,
perhaps, too decrepit for football?

Or will some up-tight parents, fearing sex molestations, forbid their
children from sharing their pleasures with a man-child?

But his young, new pals always let him play on the team.