The Old Soul
As I was walking through the park, the boy looked up at me, and there was something in his eyes.
He had unruly blond hair and wore a cartoon T-shirt that stuck partway out of his jeans. He looked to be about eleven, maybe twelve years old. The age that marks the difficult crossing between childhood and adolescence.
But although his body seemed to be that age, there was something in his eyes.
There are people that are considered to be an “old soul.” No matter what age they seem to be physically, they have a presence of someone much older. The boy seemed all of that, and more. As he looked back at me, he recognized my intuition and nodded to me in a very adult manner. In fact, it was as if he were a mentor who was pleased that a younger charge opened his eyes about some part of the world and finally realized what was in front of them, unnoticed until that very moment of understanding.
“What…” I stammered, surprised that I was suddenly inarticulate, “what are you?” I finished quietly.
He looked down for a moment and sighed. It was the sigh of an old man.
“Have you read many stories? Books? I mean, fantasy books?” Although I expected his voice to sound very grizzled based on his demeanor, his voice was a high tenor, and not yet at the point where it cracked. A child’s voice.
“When I was a kid, I used to.” I said.
“Good. That’s the right time. There are stories that require a certain kind of main character. A child.” He pushed his hair from in front of his eyes; his bangs were too long and got in the way. “And they are the only ones that can save the world. Not our world, but some fantasy place where there is a prophecy of some kid that will come and save them. Do you know the kind of stories I mean?”
“Yes, I think so,” I said skeptically, not sure where he was going with this.
“And after saving the world, they live on in that fantasy place as kings, or thieves, or assassins, or magicians, or knights, or any one of a thousand careers. And at the end….” he paused for a second to push his unruly hair out of the way. “At the end, he returns back to his world, a child again, but able to live his real life with the experiences of a lifetime in that special fantasy place.”
“You’ve done that?” I narrowed my eyes at him cynically, now wondering if my original intuition was wrong.
His response was to narrow his eyes back at me. I realized that he hadn’t stopped watching me, and his eyes narrowing was a direct and immediate response to my change in stance. The unspoken rebuke was palpable, impossible to miss, and quite unmistakably adult.
“I haven’t done that just once,” he said, drilling his eyes into mine, “I’ve done it almost ten thousand times.”