Cleveland-The railed window well

Richard had gotten used to entertaining himself and one cold, blustery Saturday he took his basketball and climbed the fence to the Charles Dickens playground where he saw some other kids. After whiling the time away playing ball, it began to get colder and sky was darkening behind its usual winter white. Richard started for home. Along the way though, his ball took a wild jump and bounced down into a window well guarded by a double railing. Richard immediately jumped down into this cage after the ball. The well was about five feet deep and was built to give some light to a basement room. It was railed off so that no one would fall into it. Once he was down there, Richard began to see the problems. It was cold, it was dark, it was a weekend, nobody knew where he was, and he couldn't reach the railing to pull himself back up. He was struck with a moment of panic that overtook him until he stopped to think about the problem. First he threw the ball over the rails. Then he maneuvered several different ways until he found he could angle himself in one corner and with a hand and foot on each wall use pressure to shimmy out of the well, grab the lower rail and climb over it. This was important because it was that process, the panic followed by an intellectual grasp of the problem followed by figuring out a solution was to grace him for the rest of his life. It got so that he could depend on it like a friend. He began to believe in solutions.