Only Eight Months

Chapter Six: Awareness and Eye Contact

As I make my through the average size town that I have called home for as long as I can remember, a lot is going through my head. I become more aware of the simple things that I have grown so accustomed to that I haven't noticed, and that I haven't appreciated. Things that I haven't really paid much attention to, things that add to the character of the town and things that you wouldn't realize that they meant so much until they were gone, things that normally go unappreciated, unrecognized.

The way that trees line the streets and give the atmosphere a cozy, small town feeling, and provide shelter from the unforgiving sun throughout the summer months.

How children all throughout town would play in their front yards without a care. The only things on their minds being having a good time, or finding the other players in their games of hide-and-go-seek.

Mothers on their front porches conversing with other women over tea, lemonade, and cookies watching their children in adoration, or calling out the occasional warning to not get too close to the street.

People walking on the sidewalk exchanging the normal "Hello" and "How's you day?" to other walkers, runners, or people in their front yards retrieving the paper. Greetings that everyone grew so accustomed to, that they were said as if it was second nature.

Leaves of autumn colors slowly drifting from their previous positions on the trees. Their paths to the ground being altered due to the casual autumn winds carrying them to a destination further away.

All of these things I have grown so accustomed to, I don't even know that if they were gone I would notice. Most likely I would only notice their absence when I was no longer sheltered from the sun, when children's' laughter no longer filled the air, when the friendly chatter amongst women couldn't be heard from the street, when no more casual greetings were exchanged to any passerby, or when beautifully colored leaves of orange, and red, yellow no longer glided down to meet Earth's surface from the trees where they hung only moments before.

I along with many others wouldn't notice and appreciate what we had until they were gone.

Looking behind me as I continue to wind through the streets of Preston, I notice the leaves that my car was kicking up and leaving in a disheveled order. Before me, there were leaves all settled on the ground in a neat order. Everything seemed perfectly put together. My car was the destructive force. Every leaf that it went by was no longer in a neat orderly manner The leaves were left in chaos. No longer were they left in one unified pile. They were left scattered around here and there, no longer in a single group but in smaller groups and some were even left alone by themselves. Once they were disturbed nothing came to help, they were left in their disturbed from, never to be returned to the way they once were.

I couldn't help but think how much these leaves were like people. When we are little in kindergarten, or even in preschool, everyone in the class or maybe even in the grade gets along. Everyone is friends with everyone, because everyone is just a person; no more no less. Social statuses don't exist and everyone is essentially one big happy family and no one or nothing could stop that. Then, something comes in and tears the group of children apart.

Normally it's either a parent who thinks that their child is better than others or that another child is a bad influence, or it's media. Most successful television shows aren't about everyone getting along and everyone being the same and equal, no they are about how some people are more successful than others, how some people are more popular than others, how some people are cooler than others.

The group of children are no longer an inseparable group. They are now scattered amongst different groups and the social ladder is introduced, and accepted. Several kids embrace the social ladder as it benefits them. While others simply wish that things would go back to the way they were. No one is the same anymore, everyone has changed.