Flashbacks

I’m only about two and a half years away from turning 60 years old and lately I find myself wondering where the time has gone. I’ve been having these flashbacks, playing back scenes from my life. With each flashback, I am transported back in time, usually to a specific time and place, like Kurt Vonnegut’s character in Slaughterhouse Five.

Flashback…

I am only about 4 years old. I’m in a sandbox playing with a neighbor’s kid. All of a sudden, he pulls out a hammer and hits me in the head. I wake up in the veterinarian’s office next door. My mom is there and she is crying. I am wondering why I am there and why the kid would hit me in the head with a hammer.

Flashback…

This time I am around 5 years old. There is a knock on the door of our apartment. A man is standing there. He says, “Hi! I’m Dick Ortman. Is your mother there?” How could I know then that he would marry my mom and that he would adopt me and give me his last name? How could I know that he would move us to a chicken farm and that I’d have a brother and a sister in time? He is just a stranger on the other side of the door.

Flashback…

Now, I am around 10 years old. It’s my birthday and my friend Joey spent the night and we are playing cowboys in the yard. Dad kept our Shetland ponies in the front yard of our old farmhouse and I decide to jump up on our stallion, King, from behind just like they do it in the movies. I get a running start and land on the pony’s back. King calmly stops munching the grass, turns his head around and bites me on the thigh. I slide off the pony and run crying into the house. King went back to mowing our front lawn.

Flashback…

This time it is winter. I am 15 years old. My mom, Dick Ortman and my younger brother and sister are getting ready to move from our old farm to the suburbs of Chicago. I take my sled and make one last ride across the patch of ice between the house and the farm buildings. I roll off the sled before it hits the other side and embrace the ice one last time. Then it was time to go.

Flashback…

It is summer. I am 17 and returning my girlfriend, Doreen, to her home on a winding suburban street that drops steeply to a cross street beyond. As we stand by my car, another car without any lights rolls silently past us. My two best friends, Bill and JR, are seated on the trunk facing backwards. Bill looks over and politely says, “Good evening,” as they roll past my car and proceed down the hill. I watch as Bill jumps down, runs alongside the car and dives into the driver’s side window and hits the brakes just before he reaches the house near the intersection at the bottom.

And so it goes, these moments from my life... graduations, marriages, births and deaths. Time seems to pass much too quickly the older I get. Thank god for…flashbacks.

FOOD for THOUGHT...