Joe

Yesterday, I received an email telling me that a neighbor boy from my childhood had died unexpectedly. Shocking news to receive on a glorious, sunny Sunday. He was only a few years older than me.

The email came from his younger sister, who I had played with often in those early years. Joe was a teenager then, busy doing teenage things, which made him more of just a lanky presence in my youth. Still, there is much I remember about Joe, like the fact that he had his own paper route which made him the envy of all the kids on our block. I recall too that he even let me help fold the papers once, which was exciting in a Tom Sawyer-esque way. And that mini-bike – Joe along with his brothers would often tool up and down the street on it, running imaginary races with the wind. I never got to ride on the bike, by the way. Neither did his sister, if memory serves me right.

More sadly, I also recall hearing through the familial grapevine that Joe had developed a horrible addiction to one of those awful street-market drugs in his later years. So compulsive did this habit become, that Joe’s parents scraped together the money needed to send him to an exclusive clinic in Hawaii for help. I never heard if he ever truly conquered this problem.

But, in a way, that doesn’t matter. In my mind, Joe will always be that lanky teenager peddling his bike, bags stuffed with papers swinging from his handlebars. Don’t forget our house too, Joe. Nice toss.