Rumspringa: a period of adolescence during which a youth temporarily leaves the community to experience life in the outside world.

 

He was a little different.

If people were different platters at a buffet table,

He would be the plain pastry near the edge,

With doily underneath, looking frilly and fancy.

 

I’d approach the plate with an open mind,

Timidly try a bite,

And discover that I savored something I had first doubted

Because its origin was unfamiliar and foreign.

 

He was a little different.

He was like the Sherpa

Hauling the baggage up and over mountaintops;

Most would have quit when the frost came.

 

Quit, turned back around and met the press with a smile.

But he who camped out in the winter

Huddled by the last embers

as they slowly died out.

 

He was a little different.

He was the student who packed up slower than the rest,

To stay and ask questions about the lesson

To expand on the concept of the day.

 

The teacher wouldn’t be able to decipher the incentive:

The knowledge

Or the grade?

Regardless, A+ for effort.

 

He was a little different.

He was the little boy who puffed up his chest,

Climbed up the fence,

And plopped down into the cherry orchard.

 

Slowly he picked one or two,

Letting the taste settle

Gradually picking more

For the grand harvest in the fall.

 

He was a little different.

He was the reason I try everything at a buffet,

Because you never know,

and you never will know unless you do.

 

He was the way I trudge along with the ups and downs,

the questions I ask out of sheer curiosity,

the way I land on both feet after the leap of faith.

You could say he was a little different.