Yard Duty

I don’t talk about this.

I work with kids. At a school. I didn’t grow up wanting this. Covid happened. Everything went sideways. I needed something steady. I applied. Got in. Life rerouted itself without asking me.

If you know me, you know I don’t always feel like I belong there.

But yard time, I never rush that.

I walk with a boy who has developmental disabilities. He laces his fingers through mine and just exists. No performance. No pretending. Just trust, pure and simple, from a kid who doesn’t give it away easy.

Meanwhile I’m putting out fires. Arguments. Tears. The kind of small chaos that feels enormous when you’re ten and the world is already too big.

There are two boys I’ll call T and M. Different races. Always together. A little behind socially. A little more childish than the others. The kind of kids who still want to be home with their mom.

They get picked on.

And out of a whole yard full of adults, they run to me.

They hide behind my back. Whisper who’s bothering them. Grab my sleeve like I’m made of something stronger than I am.

They didn’t have to pick me.

But they did.

Some days T and M will come up and grab my free hand while I’m already walking with my student. Sometimes they argue about who gets it.

Three little hands fighting over space in mine.

And something in me goes quiet.

Because I was that kid. I know exactly what it feels like to stand on the edge of a yard and not get chosen. I’ve lived in that feeling longer than I want to admit.

So when they choose me, something happens I can’t fully name.

I look down at them and think: I hope you make it through your first heartbreak. I hope someone’s there when you fail for the first time and it breaks you. I hope you remember there was at least one person who didn’t laugh.

I can’t protect them from what’s coming. I know that.

But for 40 minutes on cracked asphalt, I can be the one who shows up.

Maybe when they’re grown and trying to make sense of their own wreckage, somewhere in the back of it they’ll remember there was a guy who didn’t look away.

Who held their hand.

Some days I feel completely lost in my own life.

But out there, on yard duty,

I know exactly where I am.

vita sporca per sempre