I remember many of them. There was John, the real smart guy with the glasses. The popular pair of cheerleaders with their tall and awkward friend. I also remember the real athletic kid whose last name was Miller. He was the kind of kid that had a moustache in the 6th grade while the rest of us still secretly played with GI Joes.

I’m able to gingerly recall the years around 1982 and 1983. Thin and awkward myself, I always felt my head was to big for my body. I can still clearly see myself wearing a very heavy back pack and waiting for the school bus on the corner of Croatan Street and Belle Avenue with my big head in tow. So odd how out of place a kid can feel standing in the cold amongst his peers.

You never knew what that bus would deliver you too in those days. Scrambling, climbing and clawing your way through adolescent tendencies in such a clueless fashion seems so dangerous to the dad I am today. Hell, we made it through almost unblemished so it couldn’t have been that bad.

Back then if you ran into a sharp edge you simply turned in another direction like a storm chaser, near the storm but never at the center of its calamity. If, heaven forbid, you got too far ahead of yourself at 13 you typically ran out of gas long before you inflicted any real harm. To boot, we did it all back then surrounded by lead based paint and without ever wearing a helmet when playing at speeds faster then running.

After all these years passed, and pounds gained it seems so appropriate to refunnel these memories, dust them off and reposition them in the caverns of my head. They were good times after all. Our world then was smaller, safer and had so much to offer in the way of unturned stones.

The good and friendly or almost benign ones you remember for cushioning the ride. If only we could have valued something like that more then than we do now. Oddly enough, the aggressive needy ones stick as well, but for other reasons. Frank was a good and friendly one. I remember. So cool to see him reappear.