The Alley

We remember well the white concrete urban driveway we called “The Alley” with pairs of tall cedar telephone poles with thick black wires strewn across two parallel blocks of two-story row homes. We boys wore our high-top Keds and Chuck Taylors proudly; we boys who seldom (ever?) played games with girls, games called half-ball, wall-ball, and wire ball; we boys who, all summer long, flipped Topps baseball cards and watched them fall to the ground like helicopters landing on tarmacs; we boys who wrestled on small patches of grass; we boys who fought over “safes” and “outs” and “fouls” as we ran bases made of discarded rags, and shot basketballs at painted plywood backboards and orange rims that our dads constructed to “keep us busy” all day long; we boys who laughed until our stomachs hurt and our eyes watered.

social media
virtual reality—
girls no longer left out