A couple years back I friended a person on Facebook. I hadn’t spoken to him since the 80’s. He was one of my closest friends in grade school and we spent countless days playing kickball with the other kids in the neighborhood. One of the kids we played with was a kid named Adam.
Adam lived behind me. His backyard was up against my backyard. We knew Adam was Jewish, which was big news back then because we didn’t know any other Jewish kids. At the time I didn’t really know what Judaism was, I think I confused it with atheism. I remember one time telling Adam, “well, at least I believe in God!” Adam looked puzzled at me and said he believed in God too and I had to go into the house and tell my mom that her explanation of Judaism had been faulty.
Adam’s family had white boxer that often barked at me and the other neighborhood kids. All the kids thought that boxer was the ugliest dog in the neighborhood. One day it hopped the fence and ran my cat up a tree and then it started to hump my dog, an elderly cocker spaniel.
Every evening around 6 Adam’s parents would get in their car and drive around the neighborhood calling out to him to come home and eat dinner. Most of the time Adam would run and hide so he could keep playing, and we’d all have to hear the sound of his mother hollering his name for what seemed like forever.
One evening I’m playing in front of my house with Adam and his hollering mother started to pull up. Adam ducked behind my family’s Mustang and said “don’t tell her I’m here!!!” Adam’s mother pulled up and asked me, “have you seen Adam?” I said, “yeh, he’s hiding right here”, I said pointing at him.
It was around this time that I noticed that Adam’s family was a bit odd. One summer Adam is playing in his back yard with the hose trying to cool off in the heat. It was at this moment that his little brother burst out of the house screaming wearing nothing but his birthday suit. His little brother slipped on the wet ground covering himself in mud and Adam chased him around the yard trying to hose him off while he screamed that the water was too cold.
Then one day things got crazy. We saw ambulances pull up to Adam’s house. All the neighborhood kids rushed to his front yard to see what was going on. It seems that their pet parrot had escaped and the dog started chasing it. Adam tried to stop this disaster and in his efforts he fell down the stairs and broke his arm. That’s when his father tried to help and he fell down the stairs too and broke his leg.
We watched the EMT’s bring Adam and his dad out on a stretcher, his dad’s face grimacing in pain and clutching his leg. I asked Adam’s mom, “Oh my God, are you guys okay?” She said other than Adam’s broken arm and her husband’s broken leg they were doing just fine.
Anyway, that was my friend Adam growing up. My friend I got in contact with on Facebook had stayed in the neighborhood all these years and he had kept in touch with Adam. He told me earlier today that Adam had passed away. My friend told me he got run over by a garbage truck.
