He's hit his head, hard, on the concrete bottom. As I rush to hold him a thought skitters across my mind that there are other fathers watching and they'll think we're wimps if I hold and comfort my boy. Conditioning dies hard. I hold his shaking body close as he gulps great sobs. It's the first time I've seen him cry in years.
Conditioning dies hard.
Another boy runs past us, trips on a tree root and lands Y-shaped on his hands, face and front in the hard dirt. A though skitters across my mind, admiring him. Truly, conditioning dies bloody hard. Saturday morning I walk into town. A neighbour's boy child, wet and dressed only in Speedos is walking up the middle of the road, crying his heart out.