YEAR NINE: I was a Dungeon Master. Not as potentially erotic as that might sound. Granted, the activity I was joining was recommended for people older than me. Candyland suggests only people aged three to six play it, and that fucking game is gangs of giggles for adults when properly stoned. So, to hell with the suggestion on the side of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons beginner's box set. I would hold the fate of pretend adventurers in my hands, whether I was thirteen yet or not.

Rope ladder was installed in one of the towering oaks in the backyard. Few weeks later, Ma was choking on her welcome home cocktail when she discovered the entire block's worth of offspring partying like monkeys in the branches. She told me later in life that she decided to take a look when she "heard really strange birds making noises in the trees out back.".

It was my happy task to make Ma her "specials" twice a night. No sarcastic bullshit there, I honestly was happy to mix her drinks. Four ice cubes, a couple glugs of scotch whiskey, a jolt of Agnostura bitters, and fill the rest with Sprite. Gently mixed and delivered to the exhausted lady on the couch. She worked hard. She needed her medicine and the occasional shoulder rub. I also scored sneak preparer's sips. Get down!

The rope ladder reminds me of one awkward hood fledgling. Little brother of a kid I hung with. Sweat rushing from his quivering butt cheeks, he refused to scale any higher than the initial branch where the rope ladder was attached to. He was the hood's glass menagerie.

One day, while clumsily sprinting down my front yard, which was slightly inclined, he tripped over his own toenails. Swan dived smack into the gravel street. Had no coordinated instincts. Attempted to halt his flopsy fall with his face. Literally, I watched him yank his hands quickly back so they wouldn't get scraped, and subsequently be forced to use his chin as a brake. You could see the bone from inside his dangling cheese grated flesh. He wailed like a trodded on guinea pig.

Course, I had to go hide behind the house since the slapstick ungainly sight sent me into uncontrollable laughter. The exaserbated look on his face midair was frozen on the projectors of my mind. Oh no! I can't get my dainty palms dirty! Chin grind. Sick fuckitude starts early.

First boat fishing trip with my grandpa that summer. Plenty of dock trolling before that, but it was high time I got in the bucket. His modest boat looked like it was constructed out of aluminum siding. Couldn't have been much more than ten feet long, and two ass lengths wide. Snagging perch, bobbing cast style, out the Fox river segmented in Oshgosh Wisconsin. He got me sloshed on warm Point beer. Told me stories of times his buddies were lanced with fish hooks. Got heated when I stood up to take a leak off the side.

Since then, I definitely search for the empty Folgers ground coffee can to piss into on any seafaring vessel I am aboard.

That year I also had an epiphany about Pop. It was the unfortunate heralding of the Eighties. If I was presciently skilled or otherwise forwarned about the piling levels of suck the decade turned out to have been, I would have arranged to be dropped into a coma for ten years. Anyway, 1980 was a presidential election year. They held a mock election in the school's gymnasium with the goal of teaching the kids a bit of voting responsibility and modern politics.

All the parents were invited to vote and join their children in this epic learning event. I had a debate with Pop about it beforehand. I mentioned how Carter would most definitely, no question, sweep the University City McKnight Public Grade School fake election ballots. Pop insisted that I had no idea what I was talking about, and that I would be chewing crow at the end of the festivities when it was announced Reagan had triumphed. Carter won in a landslide, and even the Independent Anderson scored more votes than Reagan. Pop befuddled, said, as we were walking towards the car in the parking lot, "That was shocking, I had absolutely no clue that was gonna happen.". Not one other word on the subject ever. Me staring at him blinking.

Taught me two things. First, that I, at the tender age of nine was infinitely hipper than my old man, and I should probably expect that for as long as I breath. Second, that he didn't value my opinion or trust me to have the right answer. Neither of those lessons has ever changed, and he has always believed an outsider's view of things ever since then rather than mine. Always shocked that he was wrong, but never admitting to it, always says no one told him that the other outcome was possible. All the while I sit there frustratingly waving my hands in the air, "Um, hello. I broke out visual aids and brightly colored charts describing exactly the way it was fucking gonna go down! Sheesh louish!".

He made me an absolutely exquisite Yoda mask that year for Halloween. That and the hot breakfasts every morning and all was forgiven every time. I mean Yoda for christ sake. Don't believe a goddamn word I say, just give me that dope ass Yoda mask. Get your priorities straight people.