Summer, '81

Do you remember that day when I showed up at your house with the 3/4 full bottle of root beer schnapps that I'd stolen from my parents? We attached those Salvation Army roller skates to our shoes and took off down to the drug store. You lifted an Archie comic, I stole a bottle of cold and flu pills...

We sat in that vacant lot behind the supermarket, all done up on bad booze and medicine, feeling that wiry grass beneath our hands and watching those long clouds go. You said my mom looked like Veronica in the comic book and I punched you square in the mouth.

We hitched a ride with that guy in the maroon El Camino down to the fishing village. On getting out of the car, you beat him senseless and I stole his wallet. With the money, we bought all of that cheese and cookie dough - I stole a roll of double-sided tape just for kicks. We went down to the boat rental shack and while I distracted the owner with my story of taking down and butchering an elk when I was 6 (leaving out the part that it was in the zoo), you got that aluminum fishing boat in the water and we took off.

Man, it felt like we were a mile out in that water. You ate so much cookie dough that you booted over the side like a geyser. I ate so much Velveeta I didn't shit right for a week and a half. Sometime around noon you busted out that flask of homemade hooch your dad used to distill before he went up to the penitentiary. Even though you were ten and a boy, I could have kissed you you magnificent bastard.

Gawd, those were good times. Sorry about setting you up for the fall on that whole grand theft auto/double murder thing, but I'm too soft for hard time.