The Bench

The Bench

“You look familiar. Have we met before?” came a voice breaking my concentration. I was sitting on a bench in the park. A pretty unpopular bench, I had hoped, since I was studying for a test.

At my house that was not usually possible. My mother ran a daycare out of our house and it was generally a tad too chaotic to study. I did have my own room, and there were no kids allowed in it, but it wasn’t noise proof and half the fun of being a kid is making noise. So, I found it easier to go elsewhere when I had to study.

Usually I went to the library. This was my first day at the park since last fall, being the first spring day that was warm enough. I’d thought I’d found the perfect out of the way place, so I was not happy to be interrupted. Until I looked up.

There stood the cutest boy I had ever seen in my life. Not only that but he was standing looking down at me at just the spot where the sun was behind his body, so his entire person, unbeknownst to him, was radiating sunbeams. I think my jaw dropped open, I’m not sure, but I think it really did.

Pulling myself together as quickly as possible, I said, “Are you in Rooney’s class?”

“Second period?”

“Third for me, test on chapter seventeen?”

“Yes! You too?”

“Yes, wanna study together?”

“That would be great,” he sat down.

That was ninth grade, nineteen-sixty-two. We’ve been through good times, bad times, kids, grandkids, all the ups and downs of life together. We still go to that park, and we still sit on that bench.

I still love it when the sun shines behind him, he still radiates sunbeams.