When I was six years old, my family lived in Admiral Roads Apartments in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s difficult to describe locations relative to the buildings because of their strange placement. They were two-story buildings, placed so the small ends of the buildings faced the street. A rusty metal door centered on the end of our building was the entrance to the janitor’s apartment and the furnace room. It was always securely padlocked, unless the janitor was inside. I don’t know if it was because he was big, black, or both, but all the children were afraid of the janitor. In front of the janitor’s door was a concrete pad as wide as the building and about ten feet deep. The on the end closest to the street sat the garbage cans that were shared by the building’s tenants. A short three-sided picket fence, with its peeling white paint covered by a gray patina of spilled garbage and coal dust, shielded the view from passersby. Nearby was a large propane tank, used for the apartment stoves.

When I was about six or seven, I loved watching it rain, especially when the thunder boomed constantly and lighting flashed like a friend playing a trick on you with a light switch. Right after a rainstorm, with the last few drops still falling, I’d rush out and splash around in the puddles before they dried up or drained away. The small ones on the sidewalk were emptied by a single stomp of my foot. I raced my friends from puddle to puddle, pushing and trying to place my foot ahead of theirs so I would “win.” No one organized this contest, it just developed from our natural competitiveness, and the winner was self-proclaimed. If the loser protested, the contest instantly resumed until it was apparent to everyone who the winner was, or we ran out of the small puddles.