statue (climb the tree)

Quickly -- as if no one from my family will be able to see, just by looking at recent history, that I have a blog and write about, well, all sorts of things -- I want to write that I am in Delran and, soon, will meet a couple of my oldest friends. Stephen and Michael (and, I hope, maybe, Tommy) will be up at the Whistler's Inn in Cinnaminson, a local bar on the Rte 130 South, not too far from here. There are rumors that Renee will be there, but I have a feeling she might not be coming.

I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.

I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.

Can't wait to seem them both.