Javan's Memoirs

I'd have to say the ages of 9 through 13 are the best years for boys. These are the years when boys start to become daredevils, they're most interested in sports during this time, and they know for sure what they're going to be when they grow up.

When I was 9 we moved to a new neighborhood where 10 other boys, all about the same age, had just moved in too.

I lived there for three aggressive years. Cute girls didn't impress us.

Doing well in school didn't impress us either.

The only things on our mind were getting dirty, being rowdy, and doing some crazy stunts that nearly saw the death of some of us.

I'll start with some of the dirty stories (my mom would probably love to be reminded of these). We lived right next to a huge dirt field with irrigation going through it. The acreage and accompanying ditches were infested with lizards, snakes, crawdads, frogs, jack rabbits, and coyotes. This is where we spent our time when we weren't bike riding, skate boarding, roller blading, or scootering. Being one of the smallest, but certainly one of the toughest kids, my job was to hold all the little creatures we would catch. I remember one time we had close to 30 crawdads in a wheelbarrow, about 16 blue belly lizards in a 2 gallon aquarium we kept out in the field (we soon found several lizard eggs in the dirt), and I think we had three or four gopher snakes. We almost caught a jackrabbit, but the kid's pants fell off right when his hand was just touching the tail. Oh, yes, we also caught a crow that got stuck trying to get a lizard out of our tank.

I remember the day my job of holding all these critters came to an end: We had been lizard hunting for several hours, it was getting dark so we decided to call it a day. After dinner I was so tired I fell asleep in my clothes. Towards the middle of the night I woke up feeling like lizards were crawling on me. I woke my mom up and told her about the strange feeling. She said, "Well, you're sleeping in the same clothes you were catching them in all day. You're probably just dreaming about it. Change into your pajamas and go sleep on the couch." After doing so, I slept peacefully through the rest of the night.

The next day my mom began going through pockets before starting the wash, unfortunately she was going through my laundry, and back then I liked to try to get at least a months worth of wear out of my clothes before putting them in the basket. Anyway, she reached into the pocket of the pants I had been wearing the day before and pulled out a dead lizard! She screamed and screamed as she immediately dropped the carcass into the washing machine. After thoroughly disinfecting her hands, she called her pregnant sister and yelled at her saying that boys are disgusting, and that she hoped she didn't have another boy! (my Aunt did have another boy)

So, it turned out that I did in fact have lizards crawling on me that night. The dead lizard's buddies had some how managed to get out of my pocket while I was sleeping, and I found them later that day under my bed. That was the day I stopped keeping lizards in my pocket.