Hide-and-Seek
Playing the long game | Fiction | Fresh Soup
There’s a story about a boy in a suburb of Haifa who was playing hide-and-seek with his neighborhood friends one day, and he hid so well that no one could find him. Or rather, no one even remembered that he’d hidden. The other kids finished the game and went home for dinner, while he stayed in his hiding spot, listening tensely for every footstep or rustle, fearful and hopeful that he would finally be found.
The fear turned out to be unwarranted: the boy finished high school, found a job at the docks, got married, even raised twins, and all that time, no one ever found him. Only when he was an old man and his doctor informed him with a sad look that he had an incurable disease, did the boy remember that when they’d all run off to hide that day, they hadn’t settled on when the game would be over.
I wonder if we are not a huge crowd of barely hidden people, whom no one is looking for and who will never be found, sometimes not even by themselves. Death doesn't count because it finds everyone, hidden or not.
YEAH we are hiding our hearts well enough