Things were not going well. The Yankees were slipping. Everything else was fine. Marc stayed up all night to see them lose in extra innings at Fenway. He finally got himself to sleep.
The next morning he woke up in a different place. He got out of bed and was in his Staten Island room. He was confused. But going down the steps in his mom’s house. It looked like he was in 1978. That was the year his family moved from Sheepshead Bay to Staten Island. He was not happy about the move. He left his Brooklyn friends behind. No more sneaking out of the P.S. 209 schoolyard at lunchtime to go to the Hustle Inn or Z Cozy Corner. Or buying 10-cent wooden planes from the ice cream truck just outside the yard. Maybe they went airborne for three seconds.
He got on the bus at Woodrow Road and wound up in P.S. 36.
He was wearing his Sergio Valente jeans and a Lacoste polo shirt. He had his green knapsack and Star Wars lunchbox. He walked into the annex for his third-grade class. What was going on? His head was spinning. He knew he was flashing back to his youth. He didn’t drink anything before he went to bed and he never did illicit drugs. Something was weird.
At lunchtime, he sat in the yard by himself. He saw a short, thin, cute girl with pigtails wearing all black by herself eating a sandwich. They were both third graders. Some older girls picked on her. They grabbed her pretzel stix and juice box. They didn’t eat the food. They just smacked it on the floor. She tried to fight back. But the girls knocked her down. She buried her head in hands, as tears dripped out of her eyes. The girls left her sitting there. Marc always being shy, walked over to her. He said, “Hi, I’m Marc. I saw what those nasty girls did. Are you okay.” She smiled and said, “I’ll be fine. I’m Alana. I just moved here from Sheepshead Bay. I wish I had some friends.”
Marc smiled. “Wow, I moved here from Sheepshead Bay about a month ago. I miss the friends that I played Star Wars and Incredible Hulk with. I can be your friend.”
The two kids smiled at each other. They decided they wouldn’t let anyone get picked on.
The two wound up playing Star Wars in the schoolyard. They were always Sith. They constantly argued over who was the master and the apprentice. Sometimes Marc burst out into a green guy. For years the two were inseparable.
Mitchell's thoughts, photos, etc. 