I was eight the day I grew up. I know that’s too young, really. But life is hard, and we all have to buck up and grow up someday. It’s just that some of us have to grow up when we’re younger than others. For me it was eight. I remember the moment. At age eight I found out the world is unfair and that terribly unfair circumstances can take away your life or the life of someone you love.
It was the middle of the night and I was sitting by myself on a folding chair placed along the wall of a long dark empty hallway outside the emergency room of our small community hospital. It was 1956. My mom was inside talking to the two doctors who had been wakened in the middle of the night to come to the ER to tend to me. I could hear voices coming from inside the room, but not words. I thought I could hear my mom crying. They were talking about me.
