Remembrance of Things Past
During the years when I was in middle school and high school, my family lived in a subdivision outside a small town in a semi-rural area of Louisiana north of Lake Pontchartrain. This sleepy subdivision was not heavily populated and there was very little traffic. Little of note happened there, except perhaps for the occasional adulterous affair and minor acts of teenage vandalism, all likely arising out of boredom.
One day in this little subdivision, a teenager took his motorized scooter out for a spin. He turned onto a street on which lived a family with several young children. On that day, the children and one of their parents were in the front yard, and the youngest of the children, a toddler, wandered into the generally empty street. When the teenager, enjoying his scooter ride, free of care, made the turn onto that street, he collided with the toddler. The little child was thrown up into the air and fell back to the street. He died instantly. This terrible tragedy rocked our small community to its core.
In Parallel Lives, shortly after best friends Alexander and Patrick graduate from high school, Patrick is killed when he runs into the street to retrieve a basketball thrown by his nemesis Hector, and is hit by a speeding car, “throwing [Patrick] in a high, terrible arc down the street. He landed with a sickening thud on the asphalt.” This represents a major turning point in Parallel Lives.
I have not thought about the heart-breaking loss of that young child from my old home in many years, when a completely innocent young person was hit by a motor vehicle, thrown into the air and killed instantly. I realized just recently that the haunting tragedy from my own youth was too much like the death of Patrick to be a coincidence. I believe that my memory of that horrific event must have subconsciously influenced me when I wrote about Patrick’s death. Indeed, I have learned a lot about myself from writing this novel.
