Footprints

As David drove into the town that had been his place of birth and where he had lived and acquired knowledge of good and evil for the first sixteen years of life, he noticed the new hospital.

A mile or so down the same road he passed by the property where the old hospital had stood. The footprint that remained seemed impossibly small for what he remembered was a large building.

It reminded him of when he was a small boy and he and his friend would camp out in David’s back yard. During the day they would dam up the nearby creek hoping to cause a catastrophic flood, instead just ending up with wet feet. There were dragons to slay and any number of adventures on the six acres of forested backyard.

At night they would would run a power cord from the house and crawl back into their little cloth cabin. They would play music, eat mass quantities of junk-food, read comics, talk about girls and deny liking any of them. They would recount the day’s events, exaggerating every detail and both agreeing it happened in exactly that way.

Come Sunday evening David would disassemble and pack up the tent. Then wonder at the four by six-foot rectangle of flattened, yellowed grass. How so much could have happened in such a small space.

Now he was wondering how it was possible to lose so many friends in the impossibly small footprint of the old hospital.