I remember walking hand in hand down a calm street in downtown Cheyenne Wyoming with my two-year-old cousin Michael. He was playing with a small pink bouncy ball that, at one point, slipped through his careful rhythm of letting it fall and it bouncing right back up into his waiting hand. The ball bounced away from his clumsy little fingers and almost fell into the gutter, at which point a much older and wrinkled hand reached for and successfully caught it in a firm grip. Most of my focus had gone to holding Michaels’ other hand to make sure he hadn’t ran after it, so I didn’t even glance at the man who’d caught his ball until he was already reaching to hand it back to Michael. I looked up with a smile to thank the man whose hand was only a foot from the eager little boy next to me. But my “thank you” caught in my throat as I felt a tight tug on my hand. I looked down at Michael to see that he was cowering against my side, a horrified expression on his sweet little face. To see him so scared sent a surge through my heart, and I felt the immediate need to protect him. I looked up at the man who looked embarrassed. “I just want to give him his ball back… Here, little boy, take the ball.” He smiled at Michael who just squeezed me tighter and whispered so low that only I could hear: “No.” That was when the man looked into my eyes, “I don’t understand the problem,” he chuckled. But I did. Something in his eyes told me to run and run fast. I can’t quite explain it, but something about him gave me the chills. I scooped up Michael who gripped my shirt as tight as he could. “Um, you can keep it,” I stammered to the man, as I quickly looked both ways, and crossed the street as fast as I could. It was a miracle that this happened so closely to a crosswalk. “Wait!” The man called. I got out my cell phone and motioned to him that I was calling for help. This strange, scared expression crossed his face and he immediately dropped the ball and shoved his hands in his pocket as he put his head down and walked quickly in the direction he came from. I sighed in relief and put Michael down as I crouched to his level. I smiled at him, “Its okay, love. We can go back and get your ball now,” He tried to smile back but looked around anxiously. “I don’t want it anymore…” He said, “Lets just go to the park.”
Later that night after I told Michaels’ dad, my Uncle Mike, about what happened on the walk to the park, he asked me what the man looked like. “He had pale blue eyes… And he was wearing this weird coat -it was an odd shade of green…” Mike looked thoughtful, “Oh! George? Did he have a large bald spot and a aweird birth mark on his neck?” After thinking about it I said, “Yes he did… You know him?” Mike laughed, “Yes I know him! That’s our neighbor, about five houses down. We’ve been fishing together… He’s really a nice guy! I cant imagine what would have scared ya’ll that way…” I was shocked. The man was anything but nice… I didn’t understand how Mike couldn’t see what we saw.
Most people have turned to a higher power to explain things like this ... Things like intuition, body language, etc. And it may indeed be that it comes from some natural instinct inside of us ... some unexplainable things that ties us together with all the plants and animals and other small things we often think too little of
-the world is such a beautiful place.
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