Anachronism

The boy who lives two houses down and across the street is steps away from manhood. Somber black shirt that hangs below his belt, untucked, deeply blue jeans (no fading there), and an old-fashioned bowler-style hat on his bushy, almost afro-like hair.

He walks slowly to the mailbox, hands in his pockets. Kicks a rock with black shoes that do not look like the tennis shoes most teens wear today. He seems to step out of one of those sepia tinted photos you often find on the walls of Italian restaurants-- here are our founders-- those photos say--Our authentic history. He has paper fair skin, dark black hair and eyes that peer out from under the hat, serious dark ink blots.

He does not stop to examine his mail before heading back up the hilly driveway and into the garage door, which he closes after himself. Private acts are not for the sidewalk, his now more brisk pace says.

This boy soon man has undoubtedly lived in this house across from mine for years. I have seen no moving truck, no car laden with new occupants. But he was, before, a child, barely there, slipping between cracks. Now, his thin shoulders under the weight of that black shirt, that black hat, anachronistically charming. Now, he draws the eye. A moment out of his Spring-Break day filled with what? Somehow, with that hat, you don't see him playing Don Madden NFL, or watching Nick. You wonder if he wears the hat indoors, or if someone makes him remove it, hang it on a hat rack (it would be a hatrack, not a hook--that hat belongs someplace formidable). Does he, before walking casually out the door into a day turned chilly Spring again, put it on, too formal for Spring, a moment out of a history book come to life?