About that time my mom came out of the front door carrying an ice cold pitcher of Black Cherry Kool Aid. That was my favorite and as Mom’s do, especially ones that are second grade teachers, she introduced herself and handed out the drinks. Steve and Greg told her a little bit of what they told us and my mom promised to meet their mom soon. It was awhile before they met though, well, because grownups always took longer to get to know each other and while the four of us had resolved the issue of their mom’s divorce through a silent understanding; adults of that time still kinda didn’t really know what to think about divorced people. I guess on some things we were more adult than they were. Maybe the adults needed a pile of river sand to sit around and talk on.

We tired of the sand pile a little sooner than we would have if say just Mark and I were playing there because we had two new guys in the neighborhood so it was time to take to the streets on our bikes. They told us how to get to their house and Mark headed home to get cleaned up. “Ok dude I will ride down to your house when I am change clothes and then we can go over to Steve and Greg’s.” I told Mark. We all said our goodbyes and something felt better about the day. I mean being four was better than being two and with a big friend like Steve we could wander off into other neighborhoods and ride our bikes through other kids street football games unscathed.

I met Mark as planned and we rode up Princeton Street and Greg flagged us down. As we walked into the door of his house we heard “Welcome boys.” and immediately turned in the direction of that voice.

Ms. Theriot was there and she was a big lady, not fat or anything, but instantly I understood why Steve was so tall. “Thank you for having us over Ms. Theriot” said Mark. “Yes Ma’am, thank you. I added.

We got the tour of both Greg and Steve’s room. It was a nice house but most of the houses were a lot alike in our neighborhood, I mean in terms of the room size. You either had a ranch or you had a two story and that was really the only difference. The one thing I did notice was the unbelievable amount of magazines Steve had.

Mark and I were just starting to get into the monster mags of the day, making that transition away from football cards and wacky ads, those things that came before wacky packages like Vile Soap, Melty Way and Blecch Shampoo, you know that stuff.

 Now that I think about it, who in the hell made that hard pink sheet of gum that went inside of all of trading card packages. It was like they had flour on them or something. Mark liked those things. I chucked every piece in the garbage can after I opened mine, because every time I took a bite out of one it cracked in half like a piece of peanut brittle. It was like mummified gum or something.

Ok sorry about that, anyway. Steve had all the mags available and what we didn’t know yet was that those monster magazines were about to get even more popular and we had just made friends with a guy who would buy them all.

It was getting late in the day and as usual we needed to be home before the streetlights came on. It was too late to ride bikes, we would do that tomorrow after meeting at the sand pile, so Mark and I rode off to our homes just as the sun was about to set.

As we rode down Princeton Street, we agreed that the sand pile was the reason we met the new kids and that we should definitely stay friends with them.

If I would have known other kid’s from other states front yards didn’t sink, and they didn’t get to have sand piles, well I would have felt sorry for them.