The Slice: With school out, summer’s for the birds

It won’t be the same this afternoon. Because I often walk home from work around the time school kids are doing the same, I cross paths with the same boys and girls day after day.

Not today, though. School’s out.

I’ll miss them.

OK, it’s not like I really know these kids. That would require conversation. And I have no desire to become known as a Weird Adult.

When passing on the sidewalk, we barely acknowledge one another’s existence. I’m just another invisible, irrelevant grownup.

Still, if you see a kid over and over, you start to make some guesses.

One tawny-haired boy who looks about 13 had me worried. He always seemed so downcast.

His face suggested that some tormentor’s taunts still rang in his ears.

And he was always alone.

(Because he reminded me of a Russian hockey player, I nicknamed him Vlad.)

I know. Maybe this kid just has a naturally worried expression. Or perhaps he’s the kind who frets about everything, whether it’s a spelling test or shoes that suddenly seem critically unfashionable.

I wanted to say, “Hey, everything’s going to be OK.”

But I couldn’t promise that.

So I just smiled at this boy in the least creepy way I could manage. And I silently hoped happier days were just down the road for him.

Then it happened. One day I looked up and there was Vlad, walking with a girl.

He looked like a lottery winner — happy, to be sure, but also a little stunned.

The girl kept glancing up at him as if he had just rescued her kitten and had told her, “Happy to help, ma’am.”

It is a look that trumps any self-esteem program on Earth.

It is a look that lifts you up and makes all the cool songs seem as if they were written just for you.

In the days to come, I would see the couple several times.

I nicknamed her The Future Mrs. Vlad.

Of course, seventh-grade romances don’t last. Sooner or later, he will suddenly seem like a gross goofball to her. Or he’ll wake up one summer day and have no choice but to lay down the law: “Baby, you’re crowding me.”

But for a few weeks this spring, a boy who always seemed defeated walked like a winner.

I’ll miss not being in on the next chapter.

My walking won’t be boring, though. Don’t worry.

There’s a crow near Manito Park that has apparently decided this town isn’t big enough for both of us. At the same spot and at virtually the same time, this big black bird swoops down over my head and calls me a few choice names.

I don’t know much about birds. But I have a theory.

I think this crow needs to find himself a girlfriend.

“Today’s Slice question: What did your visitors say when you took them to see Grand Coulee Dam?