I thought about my Uncle John today.
I think about him on many days. But I especially thought about him today.
My Uncle John died in 1972.
I was seventeen years old. I have
had other relatives die since then.
These were family members that I also loved a lot. Yet I cannot honestly say that I think about
them daily. Or often. But I thought about my Uncle John today.
My Uncle John could whistle.
I mean really whistle. Most people can pucker up and produce a note
or two. He could whistle a whistle that you
could hear a block away. He tried to
teach me. I was very small at the
time. I would cheat and produce a
high-pitched squeal in my throat. He was
patient with me, but he told me that this was not the way to whistle. Even though I eventually learned to whistle a
bit (and even produce a little tune) I could never emulate the far-reaching
tone that he achieved. Come to think of
it, I don’t know that I ever whistled in his presence.
My Uncle John wore white crew socks. I don’t know that I ever saw him with
anything else on. For whatever reason,
he rolled those socks about halfway down to his shoe tops, so that he looked
like he had fabric donuts wrapped around his ankles. I rolled my socks like that sometimes. My parents told me that this was not the way
to wear clothes. I said, “Uncle John
wears his socks this way.” They would
roll their eyes before saying, “Well, that’s not the way you wear socks.” I didn’t
understand. But I rolled my socks back
up.
I thought about my Uncle John today as I walked out to my
street-mounted mailbox. My Uncle John
was checking his mail early one morning when a car struck him, knocked him
thirty feet and killed him instantly. I
think about him almost every time that I go to the mailbox. But today I got home late. It was dark.
As I stood on the curb beside the box to open it (I never pause in the street), a car whizzed by, a little too close,
and a little too fast. It startled me a
little bit. It angered me a little bit.
I thought about my Uncle John today.
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