It begins -- it always begins -- at a second story window overlooking the playground behind the school.  Good Catholic clergy that they are, the school officials have decrees the playground be a seamless expanse of concrete and asphalt, on the theory that (a) pain is good for the growing soul and (b) you certainly did something to deserve it.  I watch, from above, as the crowd of children fissions into two opposing teams.  Lifelong friends are now bitter enemies, and will remain so for eternity, or until the game ends, whichever comes first.

            It's not clear what the game is, exactly, except that it involves a ball (of course) and hard physical contact (of course).  Even in dreams my eyes are bad and I can only track the outlines of the game.  Everyone has picked their direct opponent and one child, not particularly small, is the target of another who's absolutely huge.  When the latter charges, it's like a piece of the wall come alive.  From the sidelines I can tell that the first child has been distracted and doesn't see the other coming.  He doesn't have the ball, he must figure, and so he is safe.  Wrong.  I want to warn him, to yell, to say, Hey, I see what is coming; but no voice comes.  Now the smaller child has seen his attacker and makes a last-ditch, too-late scramble to avoid the impact that sends me onto my back.

Lights dance behind my eyes and only slowly resolve themselves into the bright spring sun glaring down.  I am sharply conscious of the concrete under my head, having just made a double contact with it, and there's some fluid pooling there.  At the moment it could be sweat or blood and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  Later, thankfully, it's the former.  Sound comes back abruptly, the cackle and chatter of a playground, horns on the street beyond the wall, the high-pitched cries and laughs as one team or another scores or fails to.  Our game, of course, has not halted just because one kid has fallen, and my attacker is already bearing down on some new victim.

For a moment I am ten and for a moment I am thirty.  When I am the older me, looking on from outside, from above, it seems cruel and maybe dangerous, my teacher's instinctive distrust of playground dynamics kicking in hard.  But then I am younger again and it all makes sense, it posseses its own measure of rightness.  I watch the child sit up, wipe ineffectually at the dust and grime, and doggedly rejoin the game.  And then all the remains is the children and the playground and the game, but I -- the older me -- am gone.