Backstories Free Taster - The Guitar

Find this lost little boy in this story.

No doubt about it, he was a bright kid, talented even. He was quick on his feet and with his mouth too, and he could smack a baseball out of the park. But he was a Jew, and he was short. I mean like really short. The kid was the size of your average third grader when he was twelve years old. When he was taking those first steps towards manhood. When it mattered most.

And this was back in the fifties, with Sinatra top of the charts, John Wayne High and Mighty on the big screen and New York thrusting itself into the heavens, one skyscraper taller than the next. It was a one-size-fits-all sort of time, but it didn’t fit him. If a girl laughed away down the street, he felt the heat in his cheeks. Even a simple smile was met with squinty-eyed suspicion. He felt like the whole world was laughing at him, and there was truth enough in that.

The other kids couldn’t resist. Let loose from class they could forget about their failures and rejections, their overbearing fathers and screaming mothers, their secret fears and pigeon chests. For that hour at lunchtime they could be free of themselves, laughing fearlessly while they pushed the little guy around the yard and asked him what he was doing out of kindergarten, or where he’d left Snow White. That was the best one. They banged away at it for months, with raucous renditions of ‘Hi-ho, hi-ho,’ booming across the yard, reprised with hums and whistles in the classroom…

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