“Occasionally, he’d fire it out his fourth-story window at nothing in particular.
The Ledger was always running contests for paperboys.
If you could get a certain number of new customers, you won trips.
We were twelve years old and running through the streets of DC without adult supervision.
“He was a tough kid who could get up in someone’s face if he had to.
Three liquor drinks can sneak up on you in a hurry.
I kept filling her glass until she got shitfaced.
We all got pretty drunk.
Alison was eyeing the marble fireplace and asked me to start a fire.
I explained that the realty company told me not to use it.
It was in my lease.
Besides, I didn’t have any firewood.
Dave had a brilliant idea.
We were all very drunk, and it seemed like a reasonable request at the time.
I started the fire and it appeared to be going just fine.
But then the apartment began filling with smoke until we could barely see.
The chimney wasn’t working, and that’s why they told me not to use the fireplace.
We were very lucky the smoke alarms didn’t go off.
She was a hardcore Red Sox fan and immediately called him out,Youre a married man with kids.
Im 20 years old, and youre hitting on me.
She embarrassed the player so badly he pulled two Red Sox tickets out of his wallet and apologized repeatedly.
She was tough and very good-looking, too…
I was a P.E.
I told him to bring his baseball glove so we could toss a ball around.
He was a decent second baseman in Little League.
We decided to run around the Fens, but not before weburned a fatty.
I was leading him to make him run harder.
The idea was not to let the ball hit the ground.
We challenged each other and had a fucking blast.
When we got back to 587, we started tossing the ball under a nearby overpass.
Then I told Dave to back up, that I was gonna toss the ball over the overpass.
I chucked the ball high and over the highway, and he waited for it on the other side.
It wasn’t easy.
You had to find the ball first and then make a spectacular catch.
After a while, we got pretty good at it.
We ran and played catch three times a week, and Dave slimmed down.
Dave grew up in Sharon on the lake and did a lot of pond skating.
They’d come in on Wednesday nights and have a couple before their ice time, usually 11:00 pm.
Having Dave nearby was great.
You bond quickly with the people you work in a bar with.
Sometimes, after cleaning the bar and restocking, we’d stick around and drink till 3:00 am.
They worked nights in the bar full-time so they could sleep all day.
Then, the heads of the P.E.
department came to talk to my entire class.
About thirty of us.
They advised us to change majors.
When they said no, I lost all faith in higher education.
They must’ve been tracking the job market for a while and waited until then to tell us.
We were all in our junior year.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to change my major.
I considered journalism and law enforcement, but I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do next.
I was just 22…
To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…
