I remember:
Looking for snails in the cinderblock borders of our garden
Climbing the rubber tree to sit on our concrete fence
The taste of a corndog on the train that ran around Disneyland
Mickey mussing my hair until it hurt (the rat bastard)
Mission to Mars
Wondering what the big deal about Disneyland was (it was less than a 20-minute drive away)
The horror when we all realized Dave Rusick ate that doughnut he found in the dirt at the back of the playground (we all called him Dave Ru-SICK for the rest of the day)
Feeling betrayed when the five-minute shower at the camp on Catalina Island was ice frickin' cold
My dad sinking most of a finger into the sludge in the engine out of the '63 Mercury Monterrey we just bought
Meeting Gary Owens and being surprised at how short he was
Hours spent in the back of my parents' shop, dumpster diving (finding those gold-anodized mufflers that made perfect make-believe submachine guns), the vacant dirt lot covered with a fragile crust that, when you lobbed a small stone at it, made a satisfying puff of dust (great for imaginary artillery barrages of enemy fortifications), pulling loose spikes out of the disused sidings (and later feeling bad about it), the burrowing owls that made their homes along the sidings, dumping an entire hazmat trashcan of paint stripper on myself
Hours spent around my parents' shop, walking over to Taco del Carlos for lunch (Carl Karcher's abortive attempt at Mexican-style fast food that offered some tasty items, similar in quality and quantity to Naugles, another chain forced into defunctness by Toxic Smell's relentless, cut-rate "food"), munching through the old-style Carl's Jr. french fries (crunchy, crinkle-shaped, extruded potato paste, tasty goodness), that nasty little dog biting Dan in front of the Carl's Jr., riding in the '63 Mercury Monterrey over that ridiculously peaked driveway into the business complex
Hours spent inside my parents' shop, doing homework, drilling bolt holes through shotgun fore-ends, digging my fingernails into the sealing wax on the ends of stock blanks, spying the business partner's wife's breast from the next room through the faulty bathroom door, watching my grandma pour salt on a KFC drumstick, my mom finding a cockroach baked into the bread of a sandwich from our favorite deli, a family friend giving me my first wedgie
My dad and me riding our bikes along all the boulevards of Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach
The joy of using a powered solder remover
The death and bodily harm implied by the huge and foreboding electrolytic capacitors in our friend's power supply shop
How Maddie's ass looked in that sheath-like denim dress she would wear
How Maddie's ass moved under those light cotton stirrup pants that were all the rage at the time
How Maddie's ass felt on my lap as she plied me with alcohol and introduced me to all her new friends
How I felt when I finally realized that Maddie was using her ass as a tool to recruit me into the Lifespring cash-cult
Pakeha