Norman Green

COMMITTMENT

I am, all of a sudden, ten thousand words into my new writing project.  I guess that means I have to admit that we are past the fooling around stage.  I’m in.  And isn’t it funny how many of life’s decisions are made in that fashion, you wake up one day to the realization that you’re in deeper than you thought you were.  You missed your exit….  Okay, maybe it’s not that funny.  But I’m starting to like this story.  It has a couple of interesting characters in it, with a few more lurking in the shadows.

One of them is a thirteen year old Hispanic kid who lives with his mother in the Bronx.  In most respects he is an ordinary kid.  He is not a genius, he isn’t anyone’s prodigy, he’s small for his age, he isn’t a budding master thief or lion tamer.  He is, however, emblematic of the place where he lives.  They have a t-shirt in the Bronx which proclaims that borough to be the place where only the strong survive.  It isn’t true.  If you look around you will see all sorts of people who are not strong but who have clung to life regardless, but only just.  And from their example even a thirteen year old can infer that survival is not enough.

So this is an ordinary kid, but shaped by the neighborhood he lives in.  He is wary of strangers and new things, he is not easily scared, he keeps his own council and knows how to keep his mouth shut.  He is, perhaps, what you might be if you were thirteen and lived where he does: he is toughest where it counts the most, which is between the ears.  And oh, yeah, he lives to play baseball.  He is fiercely loyal to his Little League team and to the New York Yankees.

The other major character is a street kid from an earlier time and a different borough.  His is in his mid-thirties, freshly released from a long stretch in an upstate New York prison, where he has spent something more than half his life.  Like our baseball player, he has been fiercely loyal, but perhaps to the wrong people, and he has paid a heavy price.  He might be on the short track back to prison, or he could be in danger of becoming another lost soul who survives, barely, in the Bronx shadows.

Yeah, okay, I know I haven’t told you anything about the plot, and I resent the implication, sir.  I do too know where I’m going with this.

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.