We weren’t bad kids. What’s a bad kid anyway? Weird was what found us. Over and over it followed us like Pennywise on the playground.

Out in the big sunny park we played basketball for a few hours. We threw the fun colored football with the fragile tail on the end for distance — musta gone through five or six of those.

Bored with the sun coming down, we wandered back among the many semi-paved trails. It was natural still — we could only hear birds chirp and bitty rustlings in the wood. But, out of the thick came a roar. Leaves scattered around us like A-Team machine gun fire. We’d come to expect this and hit the ground.

A three-wheeler sped off and out of site as quickly as it had appeared. We brushed off back to our feet when the buzz rang back. It was coming right for us — missed us by a matter of inches. We banged heads and shivered this new onslaught. The bike spun in 180 fashion spraying a trail of dirt. The driver dismounted 30 yards away, pulled off his helmet to reveal fuzzy brownish hair.

“WAUGH, WAUGH!” he screamed.

We looked at each other with absolute pants-pissing fear. I don’t know who ran first. We were side by side and the three-wheeler took the trails surrounding. He was gone and then not.

Back again, he belted, “WAUGH, WAUGH, WAAAAaaauGH!”

Never looking back we tore toward the main road. Exhausted, we laid in my driveway heaving. The universe was attacking — somehow rejecting our communal psychic crisis.