Boots On The Ground

I took a walk through my old neighborhood today. This is the place where grew up, from elementary school through post-college, streets that have years worth of my tennis shoe rubber on them, asphalt soaked in the blood of my knees and elbows, streets I don't even know the names of yet that I can navigate in my sleep. I know the area, is what I'm saying.
   But walking it, the way I used to, following the same route I trudged to high school, traversing the same alleys and back ways that took me to my first adult job as a waiter, things started coming back to me. Vignettes I hadn't thought of in years came back fresh as the day they happened, moments in time that helped form who I am today came bubbling up, demanding admission to my conscious mind.
   There was the house where Andrew had been standing outside, waiting for a kid like me to ride by on his bike. 'Mummy, I found a new playmate,' he said. Seriously, he said it like that. I was on my three-speed with the banana seat and the sissy bar, going to Winn's to see if they had any swim fins that would fit me. Andrew and his mother had just moved to town.
   Catching toads in the drainage ditch down the street a ways from Andrew's house (but not with that little weirdo), where the cement ended and the tiny stream took over. It's all paved now, but I know where the mesquite trees used to be, their branches leaning over to sweep the water that ran from a little spring.
   Walking across that same drainage ditch years later in high school with my friend Steve, only to have some kid run up and slug him. A neighbor dispute that spilled over to the kids. Which explained why Steve suddenly wanted to walk home with me the week before.
   My daily, personal Long March from high school, slogging up the hill headed for home, heavy book bag over one shoulder because using both straps was for dorks, watching as people with cars passed me by. I always held out hope that someone I knew would stop and offer me a ride but that never happened. Which is why, when I finally got a car, I would stop and give rides to people I knew, because I remembered how much it sucked to be on foot hoping for help that never came.
   That place I assumed had always been a Home Depot? Nope, they built that after my time. The building I was thinking of was a toy store, a great-big stand alone toy store out in the middle of nowhere. I had forgotten that it was a toy store first, for years actually, before it became the office supply store it is now. But walking towards it through an alley as I would have back in middle school it all came roaring back to me. That's the place where I would buy Micronauts and my sister got whatever lame girl toys she was interested in. Strip malls and parking lots - and a Home Depot - have since grown up around it, and what was once a trail blazing iconoclast of a building is now just another contributor to suburban sprawl.
   It's amazing what comes back to you when you put yourself in the same place under the same conditions as you were back then. I've driven those same roads in a car, even this past week, and I didn't remember that stuff. But being outside, in the cold with my nose running a little, with my legs aching a little, with my fingers tingling a little, brought it all back, just like it happened yesterday. Kind of spooky, actually. But it does make me want to go exploring a little more, so I can remember what I've forgotten.