garykoelling

He stood arrow straight and had serious all over his young, ruddy, blond-topped and highly unlikely face. He held his little brother's hand and watched for the light to change and the cars to stop. "You gotta wait or you'll get killed by a car. You don't wanna get killed do you?" His words simply spilled off the equally blond head of his little brother who seemed content to hold his brother's hand but was otherwise elsewhere. I looked down as we waited and asked, "Will you take care of me when I get old?" A simple head nod came back from older one, a boy too busy to wonder all that could mean. "When will you die?" the youngest one said. The question got all three of us looking at me. And the blinking walk light stopped blinking. "Not for a long time." And we walked through a temporary parting of the traffic, not asking any more questions, just trying to get to the other side.