Retrospect: the other kids, part0

Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor brings up the idea of neighborhood.

One of the bases I lived on as a kid, age six to ten, was a fair size, especially to a kid that age. It had its own school, up to grade nine, with two classrooms for some of the grades. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, it had a great expanse over which a kid could wander in complete safety, protected, behind wire fence, by a dedicated security team. Part of the base was off limits to a kid, but the residential part you could explore at will, if you lived within.

Since we all went to the same school, you’d suspect the base kids might all know each other. However, that’s not quite true. In fact, even on the base, there were at least two “neighbourhoods,” separated by simple geography.

Interestingly, about a third of the kids I went to school with on that base, I didn’t know where they lived. There were residential blocks I didn’t know much about that began on the other side of the school. Why I never made a point of exploring them, I don’t know.

I recall, on a winter afternoon, my friends and I set out to look at the snowbanks and coasting areas that had developed since the last snow. We got in a few snowball fights, but just kept exploring. Walking was slower and heavier than it would have been in summer in our runners.

We reached a parking lot at around 4:30pm: evening was descending. We set about throwing a few snowballs amongst ourselves, and climbing a huge snow hill that had been piled up by a snowplough.

Just as we were turning to leave, the sun came out and we noticed, on the other side of the parking lot, a group of kids around our age, but more numerous than we were. The sun was behind them, so we couldn’t see their faces. We didn’t know who they were.

For a time, we stood facing them, while they looked back at us. There might have been 30 metres between us, but it was late afternoon in winter: no-one was moving quickly. Since we’d been planning to leave anyway, we yielded the parking lot, not looking back.

We only discussed who they might be for about a minute, but we never knew. Yet, it seemed odd to me then, as now, that an entire neighbourhood of kids could have existed alongside us on that base without our knowing them.