Saturday, May 07, 2016

Jimmy: The First Friend

From preschool to 2nd grade I played with a boy down the street named Jimmy. We built a rocket launching station next to the Bernard and Marie's cow pond, where out space probes could splash down, solemnly pondering the advantages of solid vs. liquid fuel in the rocket we would build and the adequacy of a pot lid as a radar dish.
He had cooler toys and I was embarrassed when as a teenager his mother brought home a lamp from the lingerie section of the store at which she worked. It was a section of a female body wearing leopard-print briefs and lit from within, and image that convinced me this was a family of wealth although in retrospect the fact that they were a four member family in a two bedroom house would suggest otherwise.
We gradually parted ways when I went off to school. We briefly reconnected over the internet, but he was a rabid Reaganite and soon unfriended me.

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