Broken Comb

At the age of 6, I was in the local tee ball league and the games would usually go all day. On on such day, my team had already played and my friend and I were waiting for my cousin’s baseball game to conclude. We wondered the rural landscape adjacent to the park. This graded plan was a dumping ground what can only be described as polite pile of detritus. My friend and I scavenge from pile to pile searching for treasure I’m sure. My friend was selecting sad broken object to ceremoniously sacrifice. He had found a metal pipe early on and had been using it to smash through the dabree. I was much more empathetic to these piles of misfit objects. Feeling bad for each glass jar and ceramic figurine he smashed. I met my limit when he found a sad small comb. It was mostly orange, bent and beaten by this cruel world, missing most of its teeth and was all but useless now, but I found it beautiful. I recall his glee as he constructed a makeshift execution platform from pieces of brick and cinder block. He placed to comb on the chopping block bridging across to of the bricks. His deranged smile haunts me still as he raised the metal pipe over his head in an attempt to achieve maximum damage. My anxiety had been welling up inside, and at this critical moment, which seemed to last forever, I couldn’t take it and I lunged down, snatched the comb and ran. Understandably aggravated, he came after me. As he eventually caught up we physically fought over the object. Coming out of it with only a few scars. He and I lost touch over time, but I still have the comb.