Today I saw the old man at the corner house down the street and remembered the time he yelled at my son.
His kids are renovating the house. He’s very aged, slow, and fragile now, and it seems they’re getting it ready to be sold so that he and his wife can move into a condo, or maybe an old age home.
I said hello, but he didn’t hear me.
My only memory of him is when my kids rode their bikes through his driveway, which kinda cuts across his yard and connects the two streets that form the corner the house sits on.
That makes it perfect for jumping the slight rise from the road to his driveway and cutting the corner. So the boys did just that, probably a decade ago. Maybe Ethan was 12 or 13, and Aidan was 7 or 8.
He saw it, didn’t like it, came out, and yelled at them. They were a bit scared and unsure what they had done wrong.
That’s my only memory of him, really.
But it made me think. How will I be remembered?
We all like to do a million things, and we hope we’ll be remembered for our accomplishments. Most likely, though, we’ll be remembered for how we make people feel.
It’s something I’m going to try to keep in mind.
How will you be remembered?