CHILDLIKE CHILDLIFE

“I can’t wait until I grow up and I can do what I want,” I’d say to my self, knowing better than to say it out loud to my mother. “The best part of life is a childhood,” my momma said as I pouted my lips, upset about not being able to go across the street to play with my friends.
 
Our house was right off of the highway that connected the west side to the east but the street that separated us seemed 100 miles wide. “I got that new Barbie dream house mansion,” I’d scream over the afternoon traffic. “I got Super Mario Brothers for my Nintendo,” my friend would reply. We spent entire summers in our friendly shouting match, competing over whose toy was better or whose bike was faster.
 
           
The summer of 1990 rolled around and momma told me that I was finally old enough to go across the street by myself. In hindsight, I think this was more to her benefit than mine since the corner store was across the street and I could now get called in to pick up this or that.
 
“Erin, Erin,” she screamed from the front porch. Her voice penetrated the brick houses as if she had super powers and sent me flying back to the house like her equally endowed off spring.
 
“Yes, ma,” I exhaled, trying to catch the breath that eluded me after my sprint home.
 
“I need you to go to the store. We need some flour so I can fry up this chicken.”
 
I grabbed the couple of dollars she held out and ran off the get my traveling companion.
 
“And come right back.  I have to get this dinner cooked,” she yelled after me. 
 
“My momma needs some flour.  Come with me to the store, “ I said to my little buddy, Angie. She took off running down the block and I followed, knowing this was a race without either of us saying a word. We scurried down the street as if there was something chasing us, our skinny brown legs a blur. I pulled ahead of her just as we reached the front of the store, which doubled as the finish line. Victorious, I turned to taunt her for being a slow poke. My tongue out and eyes closed, I did my “you’re the loser dance” totally oblivious to the fact that I was slowly backing into the tall white man behind me. 
 
My back bumped against the stranger’s legs with a dull thud. “Excuse me, I am so sorry,” I said. I turned around to catch a glimpse of who it was and fear shot through my young body. It was the crazy man! (Or so the kids in the neighborhood called him.) He stretch out his long skeletal fingers and slurred, “Got a quarter for a cup of coffee?” It was so creepy because that is the only thing he ever said. “Got a quarter for a cup of coffee?” he inquired, louder and more firmly than before. His skin was curdled like bad milk and a permanent crust had formed in the corners of his smoker’s mouth. He looked like something that hid in your closet waiting for darkness to fall. Angie was so afraid she squeezed the life out of my arm and took off running into the store to take cover. I quickly followed suit, of course. 
 
Although we were both still traumatized from our “coffee” experience, we managed to sneak past the crazy man on our way back. I ran in the house so fast to give my momma the flour that my feet barely touched the kitchen floor. We were on a mission too important for the little things like fried chicken. “Well thank you,” I heard momma say, her voice loaded with sarcasm. I ran back out of the screen door before it was even able to close.
 
I darted back across the street and was surprised by the presence of at least four other kids from the neighborhood. Word surely did travel fast around these parts. It finally made sense to me why my momma used to say the fastest way to get word around was the telegraph, the telephone, or to tell a kid.
 
The more we reenacted our ordeal with the crazy man, the more people showed up until we had a gang of about ten kids, all ready for battle. We decided that we would attack right before dusk when the streetlights came on. We spent the rest of the afternoon assembling our arsenal of sticks and rocks. “Put that boulder down,” I had to say to a few of the older boys. The rocks they were choosing were so big it took two of them to pick them up. 
 
The sky summer sky was just turning purple as we made our way down the other end of the block toward to store. We knew we only had a few more minutes before the streetlights flickered on and our mommas began to call us in for the night.
 
            Every one kind of stood around when we saw him. He paced the same few feet over and over, occasionally looking up to ask passers by for a quarter for a cup of coffee even though he already had one. I always thought his brown teeth should have told them he didn’t need anymore coffee. I guess I was wrong. 
 
A small pebble flew from our ranks, breaking the calm among us. It cut through the air and plucked the crazy man right in the forehead. As if being roused from his sleep, he convulsed himself back to his reality and screamed, “got a quarter for a cup of coffee?”  Our mini mob exploded in laughter and rocks and sticks began to spew from the crowd like hard rain. The crazy man danced in our downpour, squirming and flinching as they hit his tired old skin. “A cup of coffee,” he said over and over, his voice roughed over by caffeine and nicotine.
 
The streetlights began flickering on one by one and we all scattered the scene like midnight roaches on a bathroom floor. We left the crazy man at the scene all bruised and bloody and abandoned our unused ammunition on the concrete. “A quarter for a cup of coffee,” he screamed after us.