• I remember when we first met. You were young and I was young. The leaders of the youth nation we created in our heads. We went from being born alone in that tiny trailer park to having the world in our palms; our very tiny palms that knew nothing of the world and its evils.

    You were playing on the swing. Instead of your bottom in the seat you had your tummy on the flat plastic. You were gently twisting around, bored, with your finger dragging in the dirt where years of children’s feet had killed the grass and frightened it from returning. I wanted to be your friend the moment I saw you. You had this glow about you. As I child of naivety I didn’t know this was attraction. I was nervous. I had never had a friend. I stood staring for a long while. It seemed long anyway. In reality it was only a minute. No more.

    My childish fears of rejection were ended when you smiled at me and asked my name. Kinship began in our brotherhood of missing teeth.

    I couldn’t do the monkey bars. I was too small and weak. I remember you grabbed my legs to help me stay up but we just ended up in a pile of giggling boyhood. We played the rest of the day together until your mother called you in to eat. My mother never called. She would be too busy sleeping on the couch because the amber-colored liquid always made her sleepy.

    The years have passed. Instead of being the kings to our made-up worlds we’re the kings of nostalgia. The riches we receive from our rein couldn’t be more. Now our kids play in the dirt together as our wives sit and gossip about the petty things the nosey neighbor has done this time and we sit sipping our beers.

    We laugh about the first time we had beer. We went camping in the woods and had swiped a skin mag from your dad. I stole the beer. That night we were Huckleberry and Finn as we learned what parts on women that men found so God Damn interesting. At that time, we still couldn’t understand.

    Back in reality my child and your child scream out giggles as they fall from the monkey bars in to a pile of giggling boyhood.