found drama

On my walk home from work this evening I witnessed something that’s going to stick with me for a while.  For the folks “not from around here”, Burlington apparently has a fair number of immigrants from various parts of the world; in particular there are a pretty good number of Somalian refugees here (so I’m told).

Anyway:

I took my walk home from work along the waterfront and was jamming up Depot Square to hook back up with North Avenue.  Anyway, there were a bunch of kids (maybe six to eight years old) playing on the hill there.  They were riding their bikes up and down that steep hill: playing, going fast, having fun, being kids.  Then there’s this moment as The Helicopter passes overhead.

The kids freeze.

Now, it hadn’t occured to me until they froze that they might be Somalian themselves.  Skin that dark?  It was certainly a possibility.

But the thing that stuck with me was the freezing.  Maybe three seconds.  Three seconds is not that long but as the helicopter passes overhead, its red cross larger than life on the side, it feels like a bleeding eternity.

Maybe they were just being kids.  Little boys like loud things like helicopters.  Maybe they were just taken by how low overhead it was flying.

But I can’t personally remember ever standing frozen like that just because a helicopter passed overhead.

About Rob Friesel