I want to tell you about the night Tommy, Joey and I stayed at the haunted house on top of the hill. The memory of it still haunts me to this day.
It all started around 5 pm on a Tuesday in the fall of ’73. Tommy and I went over to Joey’s house to pick him up. His mother told him that he wasn’t allowed to come out until he finished his dinner, so Tommy and I waited around for about 20 minutes or so.
It turns out that Joey’s little sister is a much faster eater than Joey, so we tried to make small talk with her. She was in fifth grade still while we were in seventh. You can imagine how that conversation went. Something about math homework and how stupid Mrs. Krupps was.
When Joey was finally ready, we headed off down the street. We got a couple of blocks when Tommy realized that he had forgotten his sweater, so we had to go to his house to get it. We stopped along the way to watch a bunch of ants try and carry a spider back to their ant hill.
I remember that Joey found a pop can and was kicking it around. It was a Pepsi can that had the tab torn off and a dent in the side. It was a little faded from the sun.
Later on we went to that scary house. I think there was a ghost or a skeleton or something that lived there.
I’m laughing alone — over my coffee cup. I think of all the verbal embellishments my childish mind would have added to this story. Gotta say my adult mind prefers this one!
This is exactly how a 7th grader would tell this story.
Maybe one did.