The Veenman Show

As a boy in the second grade, all I knew then was to come back home promptly from school, gulp down a full tumbler of milk, change to a neatly folded pair of t-shirt and shorts, rush out the door, and jump down flights of stairs so that I wouldn’t be a minute too late in joining my playing group. Playing with friends for those two hours until twilight mosquitoes circled above my head was the highest point in a day. I hadn’t realized yet that there existed an alternate universe where, to be thrilled, all I…