This is a picture of me and an old friend of mine named Sara, taken at some point during the 1980’s. We lived next door to each other our whole lives but never said a whole lot to each other. I think this was because I was 2 years younger than her and was known as, for the most part, the annoying little brother in the group of kids that hung out on our block. Then one day, somehow, she suddenly turned into my best friend. I think it was around 4th or 5th grade for me. She was more like my evening best friend, though, since my after school best friend was John Sever.

Mostly in the evenings, we spent every minute together. When it got dark outside, we would embark on all kinds of evil missions. The missions included, but weren’t limited to, toilet papering trees, stealing porch light bulbs (or just loosening them to make them appear burnt out), peering in windows, setting things on fire, knocking and running (we called it nigger knocking, honestly not knowing that was a racist term) and avoiding police cars at all costs even if we hadn’t done anything wrong, which usually meant being chased by them because they thought we were up to no good.

We used to rearrange people’s lawn furniture, we’d hang strings across the roads to confuse motorists, once on trash night we stole everybody’s trash and put it in one person’s back yard. In the trash area, not the yard. But it was about 5 blocks worth of trash in one single yard (the Parker house). I bet the trash men were a little confused about that one. Another time we attempted to make a wall of trash bags along the backside of Whitney Page’s yard, but ran out of trash before it got very high. It was still amusing to see it there for the next day or so.

We started a club at some point, called the BASLC. The Brad and Sara Lab Club. Because my garage was the lab. We had monthly dues, but I don’t think we ever actually spent the money on anything. In fact, I never got my share of the money back after we went our separate ways. I was ripped off! I think we were hoping to save up for a set of intercoms to put in our rooms so we could talk to each other. Our windows faced each other, but were on different floors. So we had to contact each other by shining flashlights, throwing rocks, or doing half-rings on the telephone which annoyed our parents. I don’t think our “club” ever actually did anything besides collect dues.

She played guitar, and we recorded quite a few tapes of us singing and talking together. I think she ended up with most of those, because I only have one of them now. We wrote a few songs together, mostly weird parodies. I think I still have lyric sheets to them somewhere around here. I know we did a lot of hits of the time too, but the only one I can remember is Islands in the Stream. We were into the duets.

I spent weeks during the days drawing a colored, detailed, scale (more or less) map of our block to help us on our missions. This map was on a small piece of posterboard and included every rock, tree stump, garden, car, clothesline, etc. in everyone’s yard. I suppose the map didn’t really help, it was more just to make it all more fun for us. I even bought those pin flags, to mark important things on the maps.

My garage was command central, we carried walkie-talkies, we had code names, we had our own secret handwriting that we could read and write fluently. I still can, in fact. Anyway, we did these things for about 2 or 3 years straight. She finally grew up and became interested in a boyfriend so we stopped hanging out so much and I found new friends. We hung out a few times during jr. high and high school, but I guess we’d outgrown our nightly missions by that point.

Last I heard, she married, had a couple of kids and moved to Montana or something. But I’d say our nightly adventures had a pretty severe impact on my life. Someday, years from now, Sara will happen across my homepage and read my rant about her. HI SARA!

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