In the apartment complex in Denver, all of the neighborhood kids stuck together. There were dozens of us and we had our favorite cliques, but we would also play epic games of hide and seek -- and late-night manhunts, all of us versus three other apartments in the area. I believe kids today know it as Halo.
There were fun moments. Some of the kids were sweet. Those ones moved away pretty swiftly, right through my fingers. Good kids were hard to come by.
The children who stuck around were out of their minds. For me and them, this wasn't a funny detour as we awaited a house. It wasn't that way for me in the first few years, anyway. My mom worked hard.
There were fun moments. Some of the kids were sweet. Those ones moved away pretty swiftly, right through my fingers. Good kids were hard to come by.
The children who stuck around were out of their minds. For me and them, this wasn't a funny detour as we awaited a house. It wasn't that way for me in the first few years, anyway. My mom worked hard.
I was a gullible kid. I walked into the lion's den time and time again. I have no idea why I kept going back for more. I was recklessly social before AOL came around.
The least of my worries was the Jugglette. She was a teenager, which meant I was mature. I never told her that her velvet posters made me antsy, and I even found a song by Twiztid that didn't scare me to pieces. I was less awkward in those years, now that I think about it; I didn't share every crazy thought in my head and drive the ones I loved to bewilderment and blank stares. I recognized the things that made me uncool and I swallowed them like raw eggs.
The leader of the insane children was named Chad. I didn't know what it meant to be a Chad back then, but he sometimes exposed his dick to me when I entered a room and I figured it out. I would round a corner and BAM Chad's wailing penis, so ugly that I took off running.
Here is my case for why I don't care if Chad is alive or dead in 2010:
1. Chad trapped me in a storage cubby once with a damn combination lock. I thought we were playing hide and seek, and he told me to climb in, "we'll share it." He left me there for something like twenty minutes. Maybe it only felt like twenty, but it was way too long. My fear of the dark was beyond normal for my age; I don't remember if I went bananas or just rocked back and forth.
2. Chad framed me for vandalism in the laundry room. His mom was the cleaning lady. His own mother picked up the broken crumbles of the window blinds, and the wet leaves her son stuffed in the washers and dryers. He poured Mountain Dew all over the floor. I don't get it. That's your mom.
3. Chad held my head underwater in the outdoor pool; he was too young to know he was holding me under for so long that, when he finally released my hair, I would fall in the grass and dry-heave, and my vision would black in and out, and I think I was carried home by another friend's older brother. I do know that Chad just laughed and went swimming.
(To be fair, there was at least one other guy, in his late teens, that held my head underwater on a different day. It was all the rage.)
4. Chad was fourteen. I was eleven. I don't know why the teenagers hung out with me. I was his "girlfriend" for about a day in fifth grade. We broke up because I wouldn't kiss him in the laundry room. I didn't know that was part of the deal, I just thought he would never hold his girlfriend's head underwater. He had really crazy acne.
Chad's best friend was also a charmer. At the pool, he whipped my thigh with the wet chain of his necklace. Even though the welt looked like a massive blood-filled maggot pulsating across my thigh, all of our "friends" said it never happened when my mom went on a prowl of phone calls. He apologized on the school bus; even though he got away with it, he looked scared. All of those dumbasses had that Lenny strength.
My fondest memories of those days were three-hour summer bike rides by myself along the creek, and the last couple months before I moved to the suburbs, when I met a neighbor girl that I probably could have been friends with for life. Kids don't keep in touch.
Evermore fondly, I visited the dog shelter every weekend, usually alone, sometimes with a friend. The Denver Dumb Friends League was a sanctuary. I was there at least once every weekend, I attended religiously, for years. I got to know a lot of the dogs, and sometimes I cried when their shelter space was suddenly empty; but I also cried with ridiculous joy when I saw the "adopted" sign over their bios, and they'd wag their behinds and bark happily up at me like I was the one taking them home.
