Remembrance at Play
The beefy boy bent over the practice weights, flexed once, twice, then heaved. Again he heaved, but to no effect. His face reddened, but he could not budge the barbells so he sauntered away sadly. Then my brother, smaller than the first boy but tough enough for ten years old, gave the heave a ho. And failed. All eight pounds of weights stuck to our driveway as if they had melted into the tar. Finally, little Jenny Fronczek took the stage. The parents in the neighborhood and all their friends and coworkers hollered from the folding chairs arrayed in the lawn. They bellowed, “But she’s too little!” “If Mark and Alan couldn’t heft that weight, why—it’s impossible!” “She’s sure to be killed!” But Jenny stalked up to the problem intrepidly. She looked toward Hud--that's what the Fronczeks call their grandma--and smiled. She looked up to heaven, and then she smooched her flexed biceps. With bent knees she plucked the barbells from the ground effortlessly and hoisted them ove...