A Tale of Cross-Dressed Skaters, Dog Hunching, and a Couple of Cons

Sarcastic Bastard is feeling a little nostalgic of late. I was thinking last night about what a unique and colorful childhood I had. I think it was Tolstoy that said the only thing worse than an unhappy childhood is a too happy one. Maybe so, maybe so.

Anyhoo, my best friend, named Pat, lived right up the alley from me. I spent more time with him than probably anyone else in the early years.

Pat kind of had (even at age 5) some identity issues, but I loved him, and we had a lot of fun and got into a lot of trouble together. Our favorite pastimes included lobbing marshmallows into open passing car windows. The Eaton cops got us for that one. We just knew we were going to jail like the oldest Lee kid.

We lived on busy Main Street, and it provided a lot of opportunities for terrorizing hapless passersby. One time, Pat and I climbed a tree over the sidewalk and chucked raw eggs at the pedestrians below. One enraged walker even chased us. It was thrilling! He was shouting something like, "Come here you two little bastards!" We ran from Enraged Guy, screaming and laughing like the deranged little fucks we were. We hid from him successfully in the garage.

Pat and I both enjoyed rollerskating down my steep driveway into the alleyway at the bottom. The only way to brake was to fall down and scrape the shit out of your knees and elbows. We declined and probably gave several drivers coming up the alleyway a near heart-attack. We simply trusted them to stop. Who would want to hit a kid, after all, especially a cross-dressed rollerskating kid in a wig and a billowing pea-green maternity dress?

The two of us dug playing dress-up in my large basement (okay maybe it wasn't large--maybe I was just small)--anyhoo, Pat and I always fought over who got to wear the long blond beat-ass wig my mom gave us. Also, we would fight over who got to be Cher and who HAD to be that short, boring fuck, Sonny. No one wanted to be Sonny EVER. Would you?

Pat and I had a friend who also lived along the alley, named Jonna. She wasn't as cool as us, or into cross-dressing, so we didn't hang out with her a whole lot. Jonna was a little older than us and sort of a freak. My parents watched in horror one afternoon as the Irish Setter who lived next door kept trying to hunch Jonna. She just stood there, stock-still, appearing to really like it. After that, mom didn't want me to play with Jonna anymore.

The Lee kids lived down the hill from us, and there were like thirty of them, all dirty and crammed into shabby quarters on the corner. Little Timmy Lee had a crush on me, and one time he grabbed a daddy long legs spider, pulled all the legs off it, and popped the shell into his mouth. He smiled at me, as he crunched away to see if I was watching him. Sadly, I was. There was no Xbox in those days. We were hard up for entertainment.

I hear some of the Lee kids are in the joint now. I wish them well.



Pat Today