Can’t believe I’m your first response to this story.

It basically made my evening as I prepare for sleep. There’s a rich hominess to your non fiction story’s feel. It’s warm and sad though not overly so. As a reader I imagine I would have been one who attempted to have conversation with you during recess.

You paint neatly, clearly a patch of that part of a child’s sometimes lonely moments.

Think of so much of todays (and) yesterdays’ youth and how some days can strike pure terror in young hearts. My challenge was a bully called carrots because of his violently red crop of hair.

Sixty years later on a fluke we ran into one another. I’d swear he was trying to apologize for being such a dick. I was cold at first simply due to the simple fact I had nothing to say to him. Had the encounter been just ten years ago there is little doubt I would have made him grovel. Age has settled me though.

All I could feel for a now unwell looking thin,balding man was a strange zoo like empathy. No. More a pity.

Enjoyed the telling. Hope more see your story.