The Snow Castles of my Youth
I was about 9 years old, I think. It must have been around then. That summer, we had moved to a new house, and I spent the next few months getting new friends. Especially the boy who lived on the other side of the road. We used to run through our garden, down to the road running in the little valley between our two houses. We’d steal some strawberries or perhaps some apples on the way, although stealing from your own garden probably isn’t stealing in the first place. We spent the summer shooting with airguns at paper targets and tin cans. We smoked grass. Not marijuana, but hollow pieces of reed. It tasted awful and had no intoxicating substance of any kind, but it made us feel old. Mature. Men. We were men indeed….
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