Willie and the Tattletale Fish

Willie was a beautiful young boy, and I loved him.

Not that I knew that or understood it at the time.

Willie Fox and I attended parochial elementary school together in Seaford, NY, and sang in the church’s children’s choir. I think we became fast friends — best friends — around third grade, maybe 1969. One Christmas, we sang a duet together in church, a sort of lullabye to the Christ child.

While most other little boys were very physical and liked to play baseball and other sports, Willie and I loved our toy cars. We had Matchbox, Cigar Box, Mini Dinky, Lonestar, Husky and Corgi Junior, and a few Hot Wheels. But we didn’t race all those cool, brightly-painted little metal cars. No, Willie had a Matchbox roadway; rectangles of gray plastic pavement that snapped together to make roads, complete with light posts, road signs, and traffic lights. We had some plastic model houses, too, meant for H/O railroad sets, and made some buildings out of boxes. In my mind’s eye, it was as cool and complete as Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood! Unlike those unimaginative little boys who set up strips of orange tracks and let gravity do the action play for them, we created characters and dialogue for them, like a 1/64th scale soap opera or primetime drama. We were so in-sync with each other.