A Thanksgiving story from a park in Oaxaca.

I was fourteen, in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was two in the afternoon — the peak of the heat, the hour of the siesta — and everything was closed. I mean everything. The streets were empty, the restaurants were shuttered.

And I was starving.

I used to be a big hitter then. I ate the way teenagers eat, which is to say constantly and without mercy. So I roamed. Through the streets, around the main park, looking for anything with a light on and a door open. Nothing. Nobody. Just heat, and shutters, and me getting hungrier with every block.

And then I saw a kid about my age. Bare feet. A bit dirty. Dirty shorts, the kind of dirty that comes from being outside all the time. And I went to him — because when you're fourteen and hungry, a kid your age is the safest person on earth — and I said: I'm starving. Do you know where I could get some food?

He looked at me.

Then he reached into the back pocket of his shorts, took out a piece of old bread — his bread, I understood later; maybe his only piece — and he gave it to me.

I have thought about that moment for over forty years, and I have never fully finished thinking about it.

That day I understood I was not that hungry.

I have much to be grateful for, and I try never to take that for granted. But every Thanksgiving, my thoughts return to a park in Oaxaca, and a kid with dirty shorts.

He'd be in his fifties now. I hope life fed him well.