My own bloody hands 2002-12-07

So one time, when I was a kid, I was at a little league game my brother was playing in... or maybe it was a soccer game, but I'm pretty sure there were baseballs somewhere in this memory. Anyway doesn't matter.

The park that this game was in was down in Newport Beach, and there was a small hill with lots of trees behind the field. Enough growth that adults would have a hard time going back there but kids could come and go as they pleased. Lots of imagination was brought to fruition in that little wooded area.

We kids were masters of a fort, hunters of Indians, or Indians hunting the wicked cowboys and pioneers. We were knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. Well, I wasn't a damsel in distress per se, we had a few girls imagining with us to take up that particular mantle.

So on this particular day, we go back there, while all the parents are minding their children who are on the field and forgetting about those who are off it, and we find a shopping cart amongst all the bushes and trees. And it was full of stuff! Treasure, to us kids. Actual food, and cartons and boxes and pots and pans, and stuff! Our imagination now had props to go with it! And go our imaginations did! We were having the time of our lives, raiding this secret treasure chest and coming up with new adventures to act out.

And then suddenly it all ended. An old woman suddenly appears in our midst, like the Wicked Witch of the West, and is hollering at us, yelling, threatening. Our imaginations falter at the appearance of this real life hag, dirty, unkempt, smelly, and terrible mean.

We scatter in all directions, screaming and, for some of us, crying.

Parents quickly push through into our haven to find out the trouble. But all they find is an old homeless woman whose only possessions were destroyed by the imagination of some kids who didn't know any better.

To this day, I wonder if the parents knew any better either. They put the fault on the homeless person, turned their backs on her loss, refused to acknowledge her rage.

And I saw all of this happening, and I saw the parents telling the old lady to leave or they would call the police. And I saw the lady try to salvage what she could from the mess we had, in our innocence, made.

And it was then that I was ashamed. And I have never been more ashamed in my life than in that moment, ever.

And it was then that I received my first lesson in the goodness of men. And it was then that I first began to doubt the veracity of the religion I had been brought up in.

And I also decided that love and happiness were mere illusions until they could be proven real by showing them to people you didn't know, and who didn't care about you.

And, I think, it was also then that I first started understanding what it meant to be a cynic.