While I’m reminiscing I should call back to the days of 1986. Yes, that was a good year for baseball cards. Peter Rose was still Charlie Hussle, My grandpa liked the Giants and I gave him a batch of Oakland A’s baseball cards, and more importantly I was hanging out with the neighbor kid who introduced me to “Rap.” Specifically Run DMC’s ‘You Be Illin’.’ I think my brother and I walked around the house just saying, “You be illin’,” over and over again until our parents literally threatened to feed us to the trolls that lived under the bridge on the way to the park. I can remember getting a hold of a large cardboard box, spreading it out in our living room and, yes, you know what’s coming, breakdancing. Or at least trying. Basically breakdancing consisted of us doing strange contortions, spinning on various parts of our bodies, but not actually resembling that which was the current trend of break dancing. I can remember hearing stories of what must have been trillions of people dying or being paralyzed from doing a headspin wrong.

A short while later I went off of a jump on my bike and that same neighbor kid exclaimed, “That was bad!” To my horror he did not like my jumping technique or performance. I asked why to which he replied that bad meant good and that it was the new cool thing to say. I was relieved and quickly converted to defining all that was good as bad because everyone was doing. Now of course the Jewish boys down the street were not doing that because their rather orthodox parents would have pretty much uncircumcised them if they attempted to define what God had called good as bad and vise versa. Being protestant and all, I didn’t have a clue what the fuss was about. We used cool to describe things that were not cool to the touch, but certainly cool to see, feel, experience or wreck.

And finally, on this trip down memory lane… I once climbed into the bed of a truck that was parked in front of the house of this same neighbor kid. Unfortunately it belonged to the neighbor guy’s friend who was over who quickly came outside and chased me out yelling about how the truck was his. I ran home, slid underneath my bed and attempted to stop breathing so as to be nearly invisible if he came looking for me.

Good time.