Well, that was Disarming
The Idyllic Life
I was driving home from a library in an adjoining town this morning. In NJ, if your town library doesn't have a particular book, you can check a database and most likely obtain it from a library in a neighboring town. All the towns run into each other here. This is "deep suburbia," only around 15-18 miles from NYC.
As I'm driving, I'm thinking how pretty all the homes looked and how everyone has beautiful landscaping. I see small groups of women out for their morning exercise. Other groups of people are bicycling. Commuters are heading to the train station. It's sunny and not too hot. Idyllic.
I think about how lucky I am to live in an area with libraries that have about anything one would want. I'm a teacher, so books are important to me. I'm also a gardener, so I like looking at the beautifully landscaped homes. Many people enjoy gardening here and their homes show it. I like looking at their choices of flowers, shrubs, and trees.
I see a little girl on the sidewalk going at a pretty fast clip on a scooter. From my car, she looked to be about seven. She had on a blue gingham dress with ruffles around the bottom. I could only see her from the back at first, and saw she had pigtails which were flying in the wind. I had just looked at some children's storybooks and thought about how this little girl looked like someone out of a storybook.
As I passed her, I glanced to see if she might be a student from one of my classes. I wasn't prepared for what I saw: the kid had a mask on, but not a mask like what we're wearing to prevent getting Covid. She was wearing a Jason mask, you know, like from "Halloween."
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