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Box | Dec 14 2002

First story I ever wrote was about this ten-year-old kid who meets an old man in the playground. I was ten when I wrote it. It’s lost now. Everything I wrote back then is lost.

An old man is sitting on a bench in a playground, holding a wooden box in his lap. One of the kids in the playground thinks he’s seen this man before, but can’t figure where. All the other kids are afraid of him: all he does is sit there and look at them. One kid wants to go and tell his father about it, but the main kid (the protagonist) insists that the man isn’t hurting anyone and that they should leave him alone.

When the kids head home for dinner, the protagonist sneaks back on some excuse and goes up to the man, who’s still sitting on the bench with the box and has this look like he knew the kid would come back. The kid doesn’t know what to say so he asks what’s in the box. “Time,” says the man.

I don’t remember anything else until the end of the conversation, when the man gives the box to the kid with shaking hands. The kid takes the box and opens it and suddenly there’s this blinding light. When the kid can see again, the old guy is gone and he, the kid, is standing in what looks like a completely different place. Only it’s not a completely different place: it’s same place seventy years before. The kid doesn’t realize this until he walks to the corner and notices that the street names are the same as the street names right next to the playground. Everything else is different of course: the roads are made of dirt and people are riding horses. At this point the kid looks down and sees that he’s still holding the box, which is closed.

Now the kid realizes who the old man was. He was himself.