video games
historical fiction
Christmas
slice of life
pop culture
child protagonist

 'For the spirit of Christmas fulfills the greatest hunger of mankind.' —Loring A. Schuler

 'I feel like eating after I win. Let's go to lunch. Ha, ha, ha!' —King Hippo


Timmy Kleen was not a nice kid. Maybe he grew up to be a nice adult as he got older. Maybe he runs a soup kitchen in Harlem now. I kind of doubt it, though. If I had to guess, I'd say he probably graduated from Harvard, became an investment banker and single-handedly bankrupted half the country. Of course, I don't know that for certain. It's just fun to think about. Maybe he's in jail now.

That would be sweet.

Growing up, Kleen's dad was some kind of vice president for ComEd. He drove a Porsche. I asked my dad once why we didn't have a Porsche and he told me, "Because we have you and your sister instead." Interesting, I thought. Did that mean I was worth half a Porsche? Could we, say, sell my sister for a Suzuki? These were things to consider. Anyway, Mr. Kleen was loaded and he drove a Porsche. He parked it in the family's three-car garage right below their pro-series adjustable basketball hoop, which was directly adjacent to their heated in-ground pool. No one in my town even had an above-ground pool, so being invited to Kleen's was basically like a free trip to Disney World.

For starters, the Kleen house had its very own snack pantry. Not to be confused with their food pantry, the snack pantry's sole purpose was to house and store snacks. I'd never heard of such a thing. Fruit Roll-Ups, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Cool Ranch Doritos, Capri Suns and—fun size be damned—regular- size Snickers bars. They were all there for the taking. No restrictions, no locks, no health advisories or lectures on hungry Ethiopian children. Just open up the door, turn on the light and enjoy. It made the labors of trick-or-treating seem like some kind of sick joke. The pantry had a gum drawer, for crying out loud. A gum drawer! A drawer with nothing but gum in it! Are you kidding me? Such was the level of kid decadence available at the Kleen house.

The first time I went to Timmy's was for his third grade birthday party. I didn't want to go. My parents made me. Maybe they knew I'd be fed there and might catch a glimpse into the upper-class lifestyle and strive to one day live in a house with an intercom system. Or maybe they just wanted me out of the house for a few hours. Whatever the reason, I went. And after that birthday party my life was never quite the same.

If you grew up in the sixties, you probably remember where you were when you first saw the Beatles or where you were when the astronauts landed on the moon. Well, I grew up in the eighties. There wasn't all that much to remember. The Challenger space shuttle disaster? I blocked that out years ago. The Berlin Wall? I'm pretty sure I was at a soccer practice making fart noises out of blades of grass when it went down. So really, my clearest, most vivid memory of the years 1982 to 1989 was watching Timmy Kleen unwrap the town's first Nintendo Entertainment System.

It all started out innocently enough. Unwrapping presents. Timmy plowed through the crap we bought him. What do you get a kid whose parents make ten times more than yours? There were a few He-Man figures (he already had them), a couple of board games (how embarrassing), several Micro Machines. The Grusecki twins gave him a few packs of Donruss baseball cards, which I was pretty sure they'd opened and pilfered from first. Steve Zilinski gave Kleen a Marlboro duffle bag (clearly the spoils of his chain-smoking mother). I gave Kleen the children's book The Whipping Boy. A Newberry Medal winner, it told the story of a young servant and a prince, and how the two came to have mutual respect for one another.

"What's it about?" Mrs. Kleen asked.

"It's about a boy who gets whipped," I said, spraying out bits of Twinkie.

That was too violent for Timmy, she said, and threw the book away. Literally threw it away, like she was cleaning food scraps off the table. At the time I didn't think much of it, but looking back, that's messed up, right? If only she'd known the violence that was to come from the next gift, maybe she wouldn't have been so hasty.

With the kid presents opened and discarded, Mr. Kleen plopped down a big one from him and the missus. One of the few universal truths growing up was that when it came to presents, bigger was unquestionably better. Our eyes widened at the possibilities. The box was huge. It was sturdy. Even Kleen didn't seem to know what it was. Weeks of snooping around the attic and his parents' bedroom had yielded no results.

The first rip to the wrapping paper served as a stunner, rendering Kleen unable to proceed in his normal fists-of-fury manner. Through the paper tear we could plainly see onto the box itself. It looked like some kind of space scene about to be uncovered, sort of like looking through the Millennium Falcon windshield right before the jump to hyperspace. What was it? Could this be a new Star Wars toy? Was that even possible? We'd been assured that the next movie wouldn't be finished until the year 1997.

"What is it?" Zilinski quivered.

Kleen wasted no more time. His sickly arms tore in two directions at once, plowing apart the paper at the top of the box. We all leaned forward to have a look... And there she was, hovering in outer space, glistening in all her gray plastic glory. A maze of rubber wiring and electronic intelligence so advanced it was deemed not a video game but an 8-bit Entertainment System. Equipped with two control pads, a complimentary power gun and a front console home to the all-important on/off button and its savvy counterpart, restart. Within a week there wouldn't be a pair of blistered kid thumbs in the room that didn't feel an instinctive tingle when the word "Nintendo" was mentioned. Timmy Kleen had just hit the jackpot.

We sat there at first, numb with shock. Evan Olsen had already spilled Hi-C on his crotch and was now dripping ice cream down his leg. By the time I came to, I realized I was screaming at the top of my lungs. We all were. We may have been screaming for minutes and not even known it. Kleen tried to lift the box like some kind of title belt above his head and yelled: "NINTENDO!"

Pandemonium hit the kitchen. Wrapping paper started flying, two kids jumped on the table, the Gruseckis tackled each other in ecstasy, Evan Olsen ran off to the bathroom to relieve himself, and I can never be sure, but I swear I heard Kleen's three-year-old little cousin, Preston, say, "Holy shit" under his breath. This was big. And Batavia, Illinois, would never be the same.

Nintendo had come to town.


Batavia, Illinois, is a small, some might say forgettable, suburb about an hour west of Chicago. Not too rich, not too poor. Its claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Ken Anderson, the losing quarterback of the 1980 Super Bowl. Ever heard of him? Didn't think so. It's also home to the world's second largest atom smasher, Fermilab, which sits on a few thousand acres of prairie just outside of town. No one's exactly sure what it does, but there it remains, billions of tax dollars at work, blasting unseen particles into smithereens in the name of science.

In 1958, an ice skating scene on Batavia's Fox River graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It was one of the few covers of the magazine that was not painted by Norman Rockwell. Even as a kid I found that hilarious. It seemed the whole world knew that Batavia wasn't quite good enough for someone as iconic as Rockwell. A guy named John Falter painted it. And that's Batavia in a nutshell, really—the poor man's Norman Rockwell.

Nonetheless, in the '80s it was still a nice, quiet, middle-class town. This was before Pottery Barns and Menards Super Stores the size of baseball stadiums started popping up all over Randall Road. In the summer there were cornfields and fireflies, and in the winter, snowmen and central heating. It was a great place to grow up. You could throw rocks at the Fermilab buffalo, maybe even get free pop refills at the Burger King and then bounce around the Whopper Hopper until you puked. Good. Clean. Fun.

Our family lived on Watson Street in a two-story, two-colored, one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old house. We were told it was originally a farmhouse built around the time of the Civil War, but now it could most accurately be described as a construction site. This was thanks to my dad, John Doyle—the dyslexic Bob Vila. Somewhere around 1979 he decided to install a kitchen cabinet and had not stopped since. The place was in a perpetual state of remodeling. It was two colors only because my dad hadn't finished putting up the new green siding on an otherwise blue-sided house. I would be in college before I could accurately say I lived in the green house on Watson Street.

On this particular morning, my dad was walking around our gutted living room in his favorite Saturday attire: bathrobe and tool belt. WGN sports talk radio was playing somewhere in the background.

"Bottom line, Ditka's gotta stop wussy-footing around and THROW THE FOOTBALL."

My dad took talk radio literally and considered himself an integral part of the broadcast. He yelled across the room.

"Oh, you can't throw the ball without more pass protection, Pat!"

"McMahon doesn't have enough time to throw," the other on-air guy quipped. "He doesn't have the pass protection!"

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You see?"

In the adjacent TV room, my mom and sister were doing aerobics to Jane Fonda's Workout. The exercise tape would become a staple in the Doyle house, holding prime real estate in the VHS drawer next to Harry and the Hendersons and Crocodile Dundee —both recorded off TV during the magical two weeks in '88 when we somehow managed to get Showtime.

Dressed from head to toe in leg warmers, my mom huffed and puffed to Fonda. Step for step right next to her was my little sister, Lizzy. She was five going on twenty-five, with a voice so gravely and a vocabulary so sophisticated, it would often stop strangers in the street.

"Work those glutes!" she rasped.

My father popped his head in, chewing on a drywall nail as he often did. He patted Lizzy's Dutch Boy haircut, which held firmly in place.

"Morning, Lizzy."

"Morning, Johnny."

"Uh-huh. What did I say about calling me Dad?"

"Sorry, Daddy."

"Where's Jake at? I need his help."

"He left about an hour ago on his bike," said my mom between leg extensions.

"Where'd he go? Lizzy, where's your brother?"

Not even in first grade yet, Lizzy had already mastered the art of getting me in trouble. Next to My Little Pony and spelling out m-o-n-o-n-u-c-l-e-o-s-i-s for a dollar, it might have been her favorite pastime.

"He's at Timmy Kleen's playing Nintendo. He didn't pick up the dog poop in the backyard either."

In the four months since Timmy Kleen had received his birthday Nintendo, a lot had changed. Jeff Hartwell, for instance, no longer delivered the Bonnie Buyer newspaper on Saturday mornings. Instead he dumped his papers in the Mueller Crest Woods so he could get to Kleen's house in time for the nine o'clock Nintendo lineup. This was a system devised by Kleen that allowed a first-come, first-served entrance into his basement to play Nintendo. The line usually began forming sometime before dawn. Only ten lucky kids were let inside for the day, and today, even in the late-November cold, the yard was chock-full of Nintendo hopefuls, including my best friends: EVAN OLSEN: nervous, allergic to bees, constant Kool-Aid moustache MATT MAHONEY: tall, loud mouth, great at drawing army guys and lighting things on fire STEVE ZILINSKI: popular, spike haircut, all-time quarterback, mom's a psycho RYAN GRUSECKI: chubby, runny nose, smart as a whip, great baseball card collection TOMMY GRUSECKI: Ryan's twin brother; see above I was stuck somewhere around the eighth or ninth slot in line, between Mahoney and our sworn enemy, Josh Farmer. The two were already arguing.

"No cutss, no buttss!" lisped Farmer.

"Cool it," said Mahoney.

"No, you cool it."

"No, you cool it."

"No, you cool it."

"Idiot."

"You're a idiot."

"No, you are."

"No, you are."

And so on and so forth unto eternity.

Lining up this early made even the calmest of us a bit testy. We were also missing quality Saturday-morning cartoon hours. Farmer had started a rumor that Dr. Claw had actually been captured at the end of today's Inspector Gadget episode. It had us all whipped up into a dither.

"Impossible," I said.

"You're full of it, Farmer." Mahoney was pushing him now. "Dr. Claw always gets away."

A pathological liar, Josh Farmer had once claimed to have seen and positively identified Randy "Macho Man" Savage in the Batavia Apartments, who had told him, among other things, that WWF wrestling was, in fact, real. The Dr. Claw fib was just one of a myriad of tall tales in his demented repertoire "It totally happened, I saw it. Dr. Claw gets caught."

"Bull crud."

"Bull true."

"Bull true like how your mom draws all the Garbage Pail Kids? Or how you saw Bigfoot jump off the Wilson school jungle gym?"

"Screw you guys. Dr. Claw totally—"

Farmer was cut short by the sound of high-pitched barking. The Kleens' dog, Lacey Dog, a five-time contender for Most Annoying Dog of the Year, had just been let outside to do her business. This meant Timmy was about to open up shop.

We all turned to the door. Slowly it opened and Kleen stepped out onto the porch and into the light. Standing high above us in his robe and slippers, he calmly stirred a glass of chocolate milk, surveying the masses like some kind of amused Roman emperor. With a grand gesture, he checked his Swatch watch (both of them): It was nine o'clock. Eight hours of Nintendo to be had.

"Anyone for a little Nintendo?"

"RAAAAAAHHHH!"

The crowd went nuts. Clawing, biting, kicking, scratching, jostling for position. If you were driving by in a car, you'd think zombies were making their way down Cypress Avenue after us. What felt like a hundred and fifty kids for ten spots all swarmed toward the door.

Kleen tallied us up as we rushed through. "One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten!"

For the third Saturday in a row I'd made the cut. I was inside, safe and sound. Kleen slammed the door behind him.

"That's ten, that's the cutoff."

Packs of wailing kids banged on walls and windows outside. Ryan Grusecki's little face pressed up against the glass, mouthing unheard pleas to his twin brother, Tommy.

"But my brother's still out there!"

"You know the rules, Grusecki. You can always go back out and join him. It's no skin off my nose."

No skin off my nose? That's seriously how Timmy Kleen talked. What kind of a nine-year-old kid talks like that? He barked out more orders as we filed down into the basement.

"Boots off, boots off, watch the carpet. That means you, Farmer."

Lacey Dog yipped incessantly, clawing at our feet and nipping at our crotches. Mahoney casually kicked her in the face.

"Hey! Watch it," Kleen snapped. "She's a purebred Shih Tzu."

"She's a purebred psycho."

"That's it, end of the line!"

"No fair."

"No fair, huh? You wanna be sittin' home next Saturday, playing Sorry! with your sister? I don't think so. End of the line."

Giving the only Nintendo in town to a kid like Kleen had been a real lesson in God's cruelty. I'd already prayed several times to be made part of his family.

Mahoney took his punishment and trudged behind me sadly. The ten of us finished filing down the stairs in numerical order and sat down on the couch to get to business. Kleen gave a customary blow into the Duck Hunt cartridge, picked up the gun, scooted himself three inches away from the TV screen, turned and smiled devilishly back at us.

"Winner stays."

Back on Watson Street, Jane Fonda and Co. were in cool-down mode, sipping Tab and Tang respectively, while my dad was outside searching for yet another lost tool in the shed. He was always just one tool away from finishing the house. "Just one tool." As if suddenly locating the missing band saw would miraculously paint the downstairs bathroom and retile the kitchen.

"God bless it! Where the hell is it?"

Pinewood Derby cars, green aluminum siding, old cans of Thompson's WaterSeal all tumbled out onto the lawn. Elwood, our family dog, looked on as he popped a squat in the snow-dusted grass. Two years my senior, Elwood had seen it all. He panted slightly, almost in a half smirk, anytime he watched my dad search for a lost tool. Sometimes I wondered if the dog actually went around burying screwdrivers in the backyard just to watch the old man lose it.

"Where the hell is it? How do you lose a nail gun! That's not it... What the—? Aha! You dope, Doyle, it's right where you put it."

He walked out of the shed, proudly displaying the nail gun to Elwood.

"You see? Right where I knew it would—"

Blamo. He stepped right in a pile of it. Dog poo. Some of Elwood's finest. If there was one thing John Doyle couldn't stand, it was stepping in dog poo, particularly dog poo in his own backyard.

"JAAAAKE!"

On cue, my sister appeared at the back door and popped her head out.

"He's at Timmy Kleen's. I told you he didn't pick up the dog poo."

Timmy Kleen had now been playing Duck Hunt for forty-five minutes straight. He was on level thirty-one, a feat that would be near impossible had he not been pressing the gun directly on the screen. He stood in front of the TV, a massive 42-incher, and clicked away, only pausing every once in a while to make obscene gestures to the 8-bit dog that popped up at the end of each level.

"Maybe you should sit a little closer," Mahoney ventured. It was a ploy.

"Maybe you should shut up."

After months of sitting and watching Kleen play to his heart's content, we'd realized the only tactic to get him out of the way so we could play was to antagonize him. He was insanely antagonizable. The word "spaz" comes to mind. Had there been such a thing as ADHD in the 1980s, he most certainly would have had it. Mahoney took great pleasure in riling him up.

"Hey Kleen, has anyone ever told you you look like Molly Ringwald?"

"Shut up, Mahoney. Don't distract me."

"Seriously, like a shorter, dumber Molly Ringwald."

"I said don't distract me!" Kleen fired away at the ducks, missing a few in the exchange.

"Which is weird because Angela Moran looks like Molly Ringwald too, and you're in love with Angela Moran. Does that mean you're in love with yourself? That's really weird. Don't you think that's really—"

"I said SHUT UP!"

The 8-bit dog hopped over the hedge and began his customary laughing fit. Kleen immediately opened fire on him, accidentally letting his shots ring out as misfires on the next level. Before he could register a complaint, the ducks sped off to safety and his game was suddenly over.

"What? WHAAAAT? Those don't count! Those shots don't count!"

"Tough luck, Kleen. Gimme the gun."

"NOOOOOOO!"

Every group of gamers has a kid who can't handle defeat. Ours was definitely Kleen. Casually I slipped Mahoney a high five as we watched him drop to the ground and writhe around in pain, screaming and kicking at nothing in particular. Kleen's tantrums were always extremely amusing to us. Over the years we'd seen him whip baseball bats at Little League umpires and call lunch ladies a plethora of vile names.

"YOU STUPID GAME! YOU STUPID CRUDDY BUTTHEAD GAME!"

"Jesus, Kleen. Take it easy."

"I'M GONNA KILL IT!"

Kleen pounced on the Nintendo and began shaking it violently. In an instant, all ten of us leapt off the couch and tackled him to the ground. Zilinski pressed a pillow to his face, Grusecki threw in a few punches for good measure, and I ripped the console from his hands, carefully backing away from the dog pile. When it came to the safety of the town's only NES, it did not pay to take chances.

"What's going on down there?" Kleen's teenage sister yelled from upstairs.

"NOTHING!" all ten of us shouted back.

"Jake Doyle, are you down there?"

"Yeah?"

"Your dad's on the phone."

Great. We all knew what that meant. There was only one reason for a phone call to a friend's house and it wasn't to ask you what you wanted for dinner.

"He wants you to come home."

"Yeah, yeah..."

Nods of sympathy registered within the group. Painfully I trudged up the stairs, already thinking about how happy my departure was going to make Ryan Grusecki or any number of rejects waiting outside, still clinging to hope for a second chance at Nintendo.


Elwood was eleven years old—seventy-seven in dog years—and in that time I was convinced he had pooped more times than any other dog in the history of the world. His best work dotted our snowy backyard like chocolate sprinkles on a vanilla cupcake. They were everywhere. And I had to pick up every single one of them. I stood there with a poo-caked shovel and a dumb look on my face as my dad walked by carrying half a hardware store into the shed. I did my best to get out of the chore.

"What's Lizzy doing right now?"

"She's being five years old, Jake. Just pick it up."

"What are you doing?"

Sadly, it wasn't until my high school years that I learned not to ask my father what he was doing.

"What am I doing? Maybe you'd like to drywall the upstairs bathroom."

You mean instead of picking up frozen dog poo? Yeah, sign me up. But all I got out was "Uh..."

"You know what I think? I think you've been spending a little too much time over at the Kleens' playing video games."

"Nintendo," I corrected him. There was a big difference.

"That stuff makes you fat, Jake. You can't play outside?"

"It's cold."

"Cold? It's good for you. Take a deep breath."

My dad took a deep breath, soaking in the winter air. I followed suit, slightly.

"Smell that?"

Poo?

"Fresh air. It was all we had and we loved it. Did I ever tell you about the fort my friends and I built in the vacant lot behind Grandma's house when I was your age?"

Only about ten million times. "Yeah, Dad."

"All year round we played out there. Summer, winter, didn't matter. We built booby traps and everything. It was just like in Swiss Family Robinson. You remember that movie, right?"

Of course I did. He'd made me watch it every year since I was three. It was his favorite movie growing up. "Yeah, Dad. The one with the pirates and tree forts."

"That's right, Swiss Family Robinson. They lived outside all year round and they loved it. Those kids didn't need Nintendo."

"But Dad, didn't they live on a deserted island? Like a hundred years ago? How would they even know about Nintendo?"

"Ah, just forget it," he barked. "Just pick up the poop, will ya?"

He made his way toward the shed, sidestepping landmines. He pointed to a particularly steamy one.

"Do that one last. Let it freeze."

It had become painfully obvious over the course of my birthday and the two months leading up to December that getting a Nintendo in the Doyle household was roughly as probable as Elwood and myself landing the '88 Republican nod for office. My dad thought Nintendo would make me fat, my mom thought it was too violent, not to mention too expensive, and my sister, well, she pretty much only wanted to see me suffer. But as I stood there watching my breath amid the snow and the poo, I made a promise to myself: I would figure out a way to get Nintendo for Christmas. Like Mario's Princess, she was my destiny.

Two hours and two garbage bags of poo later, I was back on my Team Murray BMX bicycle, the sounds of Excitebike racing through my head as I pedaled to the one place in the world that could keep my mind off Nintendo: the Bullpen.

The Bullpen was a baseball card store, but it was more than that. It was our mecca, our town hall, our clubhouse—a place where a kid could go to think and chew rock-hard bubble gum. A tiny shop no bigger than a living room, it consisted of five long glass cases filled with cards, a candy counter in the center and, inexplicably, a shelf toward the back that housed porcelain dolls. Yes, porcelain dolls. These dolls were for sale, apparently, but none of us ever saw any of them go anywhere. There was a rumor that Ronnie Dobber had bought one once, but luckily for his sake, it could never be proven. Other than Kleen's house and school, the Bullpen was probably the only indoor place we ever went.

I hopped the curb out front and found Zilinski and the Gruseckis already there, sitting on the bike rack, shuffling through fresh packs of Donruss.

"What are you guys doing here? Why aren't you at Kleen's still?"

"Harwell told Kleen the infinity-lives code for Contra. He'll be playing all afternoon."

"Infinity?"

"Yeah, it's like over a hundred."

I sat down next to them to have a look at today's prospects. Although baseball cards had been around almost as long as baseball itself, it wasn't until the mid 1980s that they really took off. Call it capitalism at its best or '80s greed, but once baseball card companies figured out that they could give a monetary value to each card and treat them essentially as stocks, an entire new business was born. Overnight, they went from a hobby to a multimillion-dollar industry. Kids weren't buying cards to stick in their bicycle spokes anymore, they were buying them as an "investment."

Packs of cards served as a roulette of sorts. For fifty cents you could buy an assortment of random players and potentially get a card worth, say, two dollars, thus instantly quadrupling your investment. There wasn't a boy among us who wasn't thoroughly convinced that in twenty years his baseball card collection would finance swimming pools, race cars, futuristic Nintendo systems... As such, we had all become hooked on the thrill of the chase.

Ryan and Tommy Grusecki were no exception. Business savvy beyond their years, they were the kind of kids who took pride in rationing their Halloween candy to last till June. That philosophy carried over into baseball cards, slowly building them one of the most valuable collections in town. They were the first to subscribe to the Beckett —basically the Wall Street Journal of card collecting—and between the two of them there wasn't a card printed in the US that they didn't have a lead on. Tommy scoured his pack, trying to find something of value in it.

"Got it, got it, need it, got it, need it. A Jose Corn-ee-joe?"

"That's Cornejo," Ryan corrected. "Seven cents in mint condition in the Beckett."

As usual with Donruss lately, today's packs proved to be duds. Zilinski was almost finished with his jawbreaker, I had a dollar burning a hole in my pocket, so inside we went.

The moment you walked into the Bullpen you were met with a smattering of animosity. The owner, Nick, who hated baseball and didn't like kids, was prone to kicking you out of the store for any infraction he saw fit. Step one to gaining entrance was money. Without it, you were back on the street.

"Lemme see it," Nick barked from behind his tinted Coke-bottle glasses.

I unfolded my dollar bill like a little white flag and walked inside. A sickly looking second grader was standing with his nose to the center glass case, drooling over a Mark McGuire rookie card, but other than him, we were the only customers in the store. Kleen's Nintendo had certainly put a hurt on Nick's business.

If you were lucky enough to get past Nick's first round of demands, you were soon met with a warning sign, the holy decree of baseball card shop owners the world over. Handwritten in red marker, hanging prominently over the cash register, it read: YOU BEND IT, TWEAK IT, NUDGE IT, NICK IT, SMUDGE IT, DROP IT—YOU BOUGHT IT!

Rumor was, Nick had posted the sign after a kid sneezed on an Ernie Banks card three minutes into his first day of business. It was his lone insurance policy. Slowly I perused the cases. Zilinski and the Gruseckis quietly followed behind me with their eyes to the floor and shirts tucked in, afraid of being kicked out. The sickly second grader tore himself away from the McGuire for a few moments and handed Nick a stack of cards. Nick got out his calculator and pencil and mindlessly shuffled through them. He made a few calculations, pressing the eraser onto the calculator's plastic buttons. He adjusted his glasses and leaned over the counter.

"I'll give you seventy-five cents for the Eric Davis."

The kid wiped his nose with his sleeve in meek protest. "But it's five dollars in the Beckett."

"Seventy-five cents, kid."

"But it's going up both ways. It's worth five dollars, Nick."

"Seventy-five cents. It'll buy you another pack..."

Nick dangled a new pack of cards over the kid's head like some kind of dog treat. The kid stared up at it longingly, desperately trying to fight the urge. But we all knew what would happen. Millions of government dollars were spent each year to teach us to say no to marijuana, drunk driving, violent television and airplane glue, but boy did they miss the boat on baseball cards. Every birthday penny, shoveled-driveway dollar or grandmother kickback went straight to the fix. Hooked like junkies, strung out on the one-in-nine-hundred chance that Jose Canseco's smiling face might magically appear in a pack—the Bullpen was nothing more than an operation conceived to fuel the gambling addictions of small children.

The kid began scratching himself nervously—still staring at the pack, mouth agape. We probably could have said something like, you know, "Don't do it, kid, Nick's ripping you off," but we didn't want to get kicked out five minutes in. It was obvious the kid was gonna cave. He was too young, too unseasoned, temptation was far too strong. Slowly he nodded yes. Nick took the Davis and tossed him the pack. The kid gave us an anxious smile and scurried out the door to some back alley to get his fix.

Nick immediately put a five-dollar price tag on the Davis and slipped it into a display case. He looked us over. "So, what'll it be, kid? We got a new box of Score, Fleer's been gettin' a lot of good hits."

"Make it two packs of Topps, Nick. It's a cold ride home."

I plopped down my dollar, and he slid two green-and-yellow waxy packages across the counter. I took a deep breath and dove in. The Gruseckis and Zilinski hovered over me to have a look.

Although the "Future Stars" cards in this year's series of Topps ran deep, the boring faux-wood border on each card left a lot to be desired aesthetically. Anything that resembled the wood paneling on my dad's Chrysler minivan was an immediate dislike. Attempts at amusement with the "Did You Know?" section on the back of each card also proved a little weak. Did I know Montreal Expo Jim Wolford "once worked as a life-insurance salesman"? No, I did not. Nor did I give a shit. All I cared about was how much he was worth in the Beckett. In Jim's case, that would be three cents. Such began today's packs of Topps.

After Wolford, I shuffled through a series of nobodies and has-beens. Ed Lynch. Mark Eichhorn. Alvaro Espinoza. Oddibe McDowell. Sparky Anderson—a manager card. Who in God's name wants a manager card? Jim Deshaies. Glenn Wilson. Ken Schrom...

"This is the worst pack I've ever seen," observed the Gruseckis, in unison.

"Are you gonna eat your gum?" asked Zilinski. I handed it over and he crunched away. There were only three types of baseball card collectors: the Dealers, the Junkies and those just hanging around for the gum. Zilinski was a Gum Man. You had to hand it to him. He must have saved a fortune over the years.

Quickly I tore into the second pack. Ho-ho! A better start. Darryl Strawberry. The Straw! Earlier this year, our teacher Mrs. Hugo had hung up a "Just Say No" poster of Strawberry and his teammate Doc Gooden endorsing the national campaign against drugs. The fact that they were both raging cokeheads at the time apparently went unnoticed by Major League Baseball. Years later, Strawberry and his cousin would be caught by police with two grams of coke and a hooker in the back seat of their car. Allegedly, Strawberry's defense was that his cousin and the hooker had "kidnapped him" and "forced him" to do drugs. Kidnapped by a hooker and your cousin—gotta be one of the best excuses ever.

After Strawberry, next in the pack came Paul Molitor. The future Hall of Famer was one of my favorites, mostly because my uncle Kevin claimed to have hit a homer off of him in Little League, an achievement he would gladly recount after a few summertime Molson Goldens. After Molitor came Tony Armas, then a few no-name pitchers, a pre-Cubs Andre Dawson and then... Mike Greenwell.

"I got a Greenwell!"

If you collected baseball cards in the 1980s you know who Mike Greenwell is. The mere mention of the name triggered dollar signs in the eyes of thousands of boys all across America—even though the vast majority of us had never, nor would ever, see him play. He was the perfect example of a baseball card making the player, rather than the other way around. His price, a whopping six dollars in the Beckett, was based solely on speculation. And there lay the great mystery of baseball card collecting. Who decided this stuff? Who determined that guys like Greg Jefferies, Eric Anthony or Jerome Walton should be worth more than, say, Tony Gwynn, Barry Bonds or Greg Maddux? You know, guys you'd actually heard of? A perennial All-Star like Don Mattingly only went for a buck, but a first-year Mike Greenwell went for six? Next to Jose Canseco's rookie card, this was the most expensive card in the entire Topps set that year. The Gruseckis patted me on the back as if I'd just accomplished something through skill and cunning.

"Good work, man."

"Thanks. I knew it was a good one. I knew it."

Slowly, I took out my retainer and approached the counter. Perhaps today was the day we saw Nick actually pay a fair price. Mike Greenwell was a rare commodity. Proudly, I set the card down before him. He didn't even blink.

"Dollar ten. It'll buy you two more packs."

And that was how I lost my first Mike Greenwell.


It was a well-known fact at HC Wilson Elementary that the true start of the Christmas season rested on the pretty little shoulders of our art teacher, Miss Ciarocci. Once the Thanksgiving decorations had come down and the recess temperatures dropped to proper loogie-hawking levels outside, we all knew we were closing in on the Christmas kickoff. Ciarocci, smiling and steadfast, would sit us down, each of us uniformly dressed in our fathers'-backward-dress-shirt smocks, and lay it on us.

"Good morning, class."

"Good morning, Miss Cee-ah-roh-cee."

"Today is a very special day for us. Does anyone know why?"

Could it be? Was today the day? Quickly my hand shot up.

"Yes, Jake Doyle."

"Is it because we're gonna start making our Christmas tree ornaments?"

"Very good, Jake, that's right. Today we start our Christmas ornament projects."

Hell yes! Every year, Ciarocci's announcement was the starter pistol's bang to an entirely new outlook on life, a call to arms that legitimized our collective insanity and excitement over the pending holiday. The ornaments meant there was no denying it anymore. Christmas was here. Officially. Parental threats of canceled Christmases in years past for bad behavior could no longer be deemed worthy of our concern. A teacher had told us to start making Christmas stuff. This was for school. This was for a grade. This was for real. Christmas had begun!

"Now everyone get out your drawing materials. The first step is designing the ornament." She smiled and patted my head as she walked by. Oh man, a head pat from Ciarocci and an announcement that Christmas was here. It was almost too much to handle. I drooled a little bit on my smock as I watched her walk to the front of the class.

I never learned Miss Ciarocci's first name, but I'd like to think it was something cool and groovy, like Sunshine or Gloria. She couldn't have been more than twenty-four. Trapped in an '80s world of yuppie commercialism, she'd clearly been born in the wrong era. Simply put, Miss Ciarocci was a hippie. A grade A, sweet-smiling, no-makeup-necessary, drop-dead gorgeous hippie. Ponytailed red hair, big green eyes and skin the color of peach Crayolas. Where other teachers wore shoulder pads and big earrings, Ciarocci wore flowing skirts and hemp necklaces. She smelled of patchouli and paste and I was madly in love with her.

Sweet Ciarocci was probably the only person in the world who could have kept my Nintendo obsession at bay that year. So resolute was my desire to gain her affection that I vowed to create the greatest Christmas ornament ever produced. There was only one small hurdle standing in my way—namely, my utter inability to paint, draw, cut, paste, glue, glitter or otherwise assemble any type of artistic structure not resembling a blob of crud. While marginally creative, I had the fine motor skills of a Muppet. Medical records have since shown, as my sister later pointed to in moments of triumph, that I could not even hop on one foot until the age of ten. But this year I was determined to come up with an ornament masterpiece. It was December 4th. I had twenty-one days until Christmas. The season had officially begun.

Even that night at the family dinner table I could feel the warmth of the holiday spirit seeping in.

"Damn it, Jake! That thing's not a toy!" yelled my father, flicking at my retainer. I was spinning it like a top on the kitchen table, deep in thought.

"But we're about to eat."

"Do you know how much that thing costs? Put it back in."

Reluctantly I popped the retainer back in my mouth. Usually I'd run water over the disgusting hunk of purple plastic (why in God's name had I chosen purple?) before inserting it back in, but when my dad was around it was best to just shove it in there as quickly as possible. The man viewed every second that it was out of my mouth as dollar bills flying out of his wallet.

Lizzy came bounding down the stairs.

"I washed my hands for dinner, Mommy."

"That's very good, Lizzy."

"I know. I bet Jake didn't wash his hands. Did you wash your hands, Jake?"

"Jake, dear, go wash your—"

"Yeah, yeah..." I trudged over to the sink.

Oh God, washing your hands... For some reason, and I'll never really know why—I don't think any of us will—but when you're a kid there's no task more hated, more loathed at its very sanitary core than washing your hands for dinner. The abhorrence makes no sense. Washing your hands takes about nine seconds. Walk to faucet. Turn on faucet. Slide hands in and out of stream. Turn off faucet. And you're done. That's it. You could even skimp on drying off or using soap if you wanted. I, for one, was constantly pushing the limits of what I could get away with, as if unclean hands were some kind of nine-year-old's badge of honor.

By about the age of seven I'd perfected the single-drip wash. That's one drip, singular. This maneuver required me to turn on the faucet in such a delicate manner that only one drip of water was released. At the millisecond of discharge my hands would dart under the faucet to catch the drip, both rubbing together and shutting off the stream at the same time. No soap. No towel. Total wash time: two-point-eight seconds. I'll show you washing hands, Mom and Dad! Sometimes I still catch myself doing it late at night in dive-bar bathrooms.

I hopped down from the kitchen sink stool and shot my sister the evil eye. Chili was being dished out at the table, a sign that it was okay to take out my retainer. Chili was one of the old man's favorites. He poured on the cheese and often favored Tostito chips or Ritz crackers instead of a spoon. Very classy.

"Let's pray, huh," he said, his eyes watering.

We all made the sign of the cross. Never one for correct Catholic wording, my prayer went something like:

"Best that oh Lord for these eye gifts which come out to receive, from somebody, oh Christ our Lord. Amen."

By the time the family was making the closing sign of the cross, my dad already had two mouthfuls of chili in and was starting in on his third. Raised in an Irish/Polish family of eight, he saw prayer only as a deterrent to food. He'd developed a devious dinner prayer shorthand that he conveniently disguised as Latin. Next to driving, praying was probably the fastest thing he did all day. His Sunday post-Eucharist sneak-outs to Smiley's Doughnuts were legendary.

My mom spoke between polite slurps. "You know, Jake, I ran into Steve Zilinski's mom at the Jewel today."

That was never good.

"You know what she said?"

Something that was bound to make my life less fun?

"She mentioned how much you boys have been playing Nintendo. Is that all you've been doing over at the Kleens' these past few months?"

Yes. 100%. "No..."

"What do his parents say about it?"

"Well, they're not home all that much."

"They're not at home when you're there?"

Quickly I caught myself. "Um, I mean they don't come into the basement all that much, is all."

Lizzy looked up slyly from her chili, waiting to pounce. "This is excellent chili, Mother."

"Thank you, Lizzy."

My dad chimed in. "What your mom is trying to say, Jake, is no more Nintendo."

"What? No way!"

"Just a few hours on the weekends, okay, honey? Mrs. Zilinski read it's been doing all kinds of strange things to children in Japan."

You mean like making them smarter, faster, better at karate? Those things?

"They get so involved, they forget about everything else, school, friends. It's bad for your eyes. One little boy in Tokyo supposedly had a seizure."

Lies.

My dad's bowl had been finished and he was now fully tuned in. "That's why they peddle their techno-junk over here, you know. New Japanese takeover tactics. Reagan won't stand for it, Patty, and neither will I. Jake, no more."

"Mom!"

"Your father's right, honey, just a little bit on weekends. No more during the week. That's final."

Lizzy's smirk was now fully visible. "Nintendo-no-friendo."

This was serious. How was I supposed to convince my parents to get a Nintendo for our own home if they didn't even want me playing it at someone else's?

Later that night, curled up before the gentle glow of our ten-channel Zenith, the gears of my Christmas engine continued to churn. There had to be some way I could get a Nintendo. There had to be. Not even Marc Summers and his messy antics as host of Family Double Dare could keep my mind off of it. I had been a fan of the game show for years, regularly envisioning what it might be like if my family was ever plucked from obscurity to compete for valuable prize packages and television glory...

"The Doyle family, ladies and gentlemen! Let's give them a big Double Dare round of applause!"

The studio audience roared. We stood there before them, team name: "Slime and Punishment" (clearly my sister's idea), half-soaked, covered in ice cream toppings and other various goop-like products, the result of twenty minutes of victorious physical challenges. Of this much I was certain: even if my sister claimed to have the correct answer to any trivia question, John Doyle would still opt for the physical challenge. Being made to look like an idiot in public was something of a Doyle code of honor. Like moths to a flame, Doyle men had a hard time backing down from any dare of physical stupidity. Our backyard had the fireworks scars to prove it.

"So, how do you feel about making it to the final round, Mr. Doyle?"

"Pretty good, Marc, pretty good. I believe I have a peppermint gumdrop lodged in my ear right now, but I'm confident we can all pull through and get the job done here in sixty seconds or less."

"Sounds like a man on a mission. What do you think, Mom?"

"I just hope no one gets hurt, Marc."

"There you have it, folks. Team Slime and Punishment has sixty seconds or less to grab all eight flags and complete the Family Double Dare obstacle course. So tighten up those safety goggles and elbow pads, Doyles, and get ready to get messy. Alright, on my signal... ON YOUR MARK. GET SET. GO!"

Lizzy was off like a shot through the Wringer. Hand cranked by me with enough force to crush her innards, she squirted down the slide and picked up the first orange flag. Summers did the play-by-play, doing his best not to get goop all over his patented jeans-and-sport-coat combo.

"That's one down, seven to go, we've got fifty-five seconds left on the clock!"

My dad grabbed the flag from Lizzy, thrusting it down his shirt as was bizarrely customary to do. He sprinted straight to an awaiting tricycle, mounted it and fell off three times before he even got foot to pedal. He bashed and slid and muscled his way down the slippery Icy Trike path toward the flag. Chocolate-syrup-covered blood trickled down his face and elbows. You think reality TV shows today are dangerous? Double Dare would eat their children.

"That's two! Go go go! Forty-five seconds left!"

I was next. The Blue Plate Special. Luckily, I had a strategy. I'd noticed on TV on more than one occasion that the flag was never deep inside the waffle on the plate. Instead, it was always poking out somewhere on the perimeter. Throughout the commercial break I had searched for it, slyly, and spotted it. Cheating? Perhaps. But it got us the flag in under three seconds. I think even Summers was impressed.

"Jake's got it! Right there! Pass it off! Pass it off!"

My mom grabbed the flag and took off toward Pick It!—a plastic nose the size of a Volvo. Somewhere inside one of the nostrils was the flag. You literally had to nose pick it out. I had specifically volunteered my mom for this obstacle, hoping that if she succeeded, the irony of the victory would keep her from scolding me about my own nose-picking tendencies. It was worth a shot.

"Dig! Dig! Dig! Find it, Patty! Aaaannnd... She's got it!"

Covered in synthetic boogers, my mom tossed the flag to my dad, who immediately separated his shoulder sprinting onto the Human Hamster Wheel. WHAM! Down for the count, right on his side. He dismissed the getting-up part and segued directly into crawling his way to the flag, hamster-style. Pain did not exist in my old man's dojo. Neither did dignity.

"Oh, they really want it, folks! Look at that! I have never seen it done that way before! Harvey, are you watching this? Twenty-five seconds left! Five down. Three to go!"

The sheer determination in my sister's eyes could have leveled a Minnesota Viking. "Outta my way!" BANG! She punched her three-foot frame through the Baked Alaskan Squisher grabbing the sixth flag and passing it to my mom. "Hustle, Patricia! Hustle!"

"Ten seconds! Nine! Eight!"

Patty Doyle, all ninety-seven pounds of her, dove headfirst into the Gak Vat, pulling down fifty gallons of slime and the seventh orange flag.

"Seven seconds...! Six...! Five...!"

It was up to me now. All that stood between us and a prize package of incomprehensible value was Mount Saint Double Dare. Oh no! Not Mount Saint Double Dare! Surely the most feared obstacle in all of Nickelodeon Studios! Frantically I scrambled up the massive faux Nerf volcano. My goggles fogging, my complimentary Reebok tennis shoes holding on for dear life, I was running blind. Gak and slime of all colors and horrible textures spewed forth from the top. I wasn't going to make it.

"Four...! Three...!"

I could hear my family screaming below, my mother's shrieks of encouragement mixed nicely between my father's obscenities. It was now or never. I pushed off and leapt into the slime abyss.

"Two... One...!"

My hand clenched something triangular. Cautiously I rose from the goop. Could it be? The clock had stopped and the crowd had reached an eerie silence. Slowly I lifted my hand... Through the green chunks, a distinct orange glow shone through.

The flag.

"He's got it! He's got it! By God, the Doyles did it!"

The crowd went berserk. Lizzy jumped into my dad's bloody arms. My mom planted a wet one on Summers' cheek. I did my best Michael Jordan-just-beating-Cleveland jumping fist pump. We did it! We had won it all!

"Harvey, tell them what they've won!"

"Sure thing, Marc! They've won the gum-ball machine, the Casio keyboard synthesizer, the Nash skateboards, the Speedo exercise attire and leg warmers, the set of Coleman coolers, the Milton Bradley ultimate board game package, the family set of Scott skis, boots and poles, and the Nintendo Entertainment System! A prize package worth over two thousand three—"

At the word "Nintendo," my dad quickly reached over and grabbed Summers' microphone.

"Oh, sorry, sorry there, Harvey. No, actually we won't be taking the Nintendo. I know, I know, it's just a family rule we have, everybody. We'll be giving the Nintendo to the blue team."

What? Hold it right there. Wait a second. In horror I watched my dad hand over the system to our competitors. They were green eyed and redheaded and all had faces that looked exactly like Timmy Kleen's. They were pointing and laughing at me. This couldn't be happening. What was going on? Everything suddenly went into slow motion and I felt myself begin to tumble down Mount Saint Double Dare.

"Jake? Jake? Jake..."

Slowly my eyes opened. I'd been asleep for God knows how long in front of the TV. My sister was standing above me, not very gently poking me with a Pound Puppy.

"You were picking your nose in your sleep. And then you started crying."

"Oh." I said. It was all I could muster.

Even in my dreams Nintendo seemed like a stretch.


It had snowed overnight, the first big storm of the season. Flakes started coming down right around bedtime and hadn't stopped since. Waking up to snow was like waking up to a new lease on life. Like a little present just waiting for you outside your bedroom window; tons and tons of the stuff, as far as the eye could see. You could dive in it, climb around in it, slide down it, hurl it at your sister's face with only evaporating consequences, build forts, pretend you were Han Solo saving Luke Skywalker in Hoth—the sky was the limit. In my Nintendo haste I'd actually kind of forgotten how fun it was when it snowed.

"Are we having a snow day, Mom?" I asked, my face pressed up against the kitchen window.

"Don't count on it, dear."

Of course not. Why should I? I often wondered where we'd even heard the term "snow day." TV, maybe? Did snow days really exist? Or was it some kind of urban myth Wisconsinites invented to make Chicagoans look like idiots? Because in all the time I'd been enrolled in the Batavia Public School System, I'd never had one. Not one single snow day. It was depressing just thinking about it. Nowadays you can't even turn on your computer without reading about some school that's canceled for the day, the week, the month because of weather. There could have been fifty inches and swine flu and we'd still have had to go to school. The policy list of justifications for school cancellation in 1980s Chicagoland must have read something like this: 1. Threat of Soviet attack 2. Snow Tornado 3. Armageddon So it was off to school I went. I forged ahead into the wind and mush, blocking a path for my little sister behind me. She trudged forth in her lime-green one-piece snowsuit. I pulled up the collar of my JCPenney bomber jacket, careful not to lick the zipper, a mistake I'd learned the hard way last winter.

"Why don't you have your boots on, Jake?"

She knew exactly why I didn't have my boots on.

"Shut up, Lizzy."

"Ooh. You said a swear."

"'Shut up' isn't a swear, alright?"

"I'm gonna tell Mom."

"You do that."

"And I'm gonna tell her you took off your boots too."

There was a reason why I was the only kid in a fifty-mile radius walking to school in his gym shoes. It was a painful reason. One that troubles me even to this day. I wasn't wearing my boots because... my boots were girls' boots.

Let that sink in for a second. Girls' boots.

Like much of my wardrobe, the boots had been purchased in a TJ Maxx coupon–induced bout of madness by my mother in which all rationale of style, taste, comfort level or gender was thrown out in favor of conquering her ultimate test of motherhood, the closeout sale.

The boots were red with pretty white trim and pretty white zippers and a pretty white logo on the heel that said ESPRIT. A word that I'd later learn was not only synonymous with female fashion but also French. French! They were cute and cuddly and a death sentence at school if anyone ever found out. As such, they were now scrunched in my backpack, where I hoped they would stay until I outgrew them and could hand them down to my little cousin Brian. It would be payback for his blatant disregard for water gun fighting rules over the summer. Earth to Brian: You can't use a garden hose in a water gun fight. I don't care what they say up in Minnesota.

"Come on, Lizzy, hurry up, will ya?"

I stood on the corner, about three blocks from school, and squinted. Through the snow and the minivan-lineup exhaust, I could already make out The Mound. It had only snowed one night, but already its size sent chills down my spine.

The Mound was really nothing more than a snow pile, but at its February peak it could grow as high as two stories, practically dwarfing the school itself. It was ominous, looming, scary. Because of the school's circular driveway, the city's plows had to dump all excess snow and subsequent gravel in one giant heap next to the jungle gym. The result was the biggest, most dangerous piece of school property in Kane County. And Monday through Friday it was where every boy, K through five, for reasons unknown, would gather before school to have his skull crushed while playing the exceedingly violent knock-out game, King of the Mountain.

I ditched my bag and saddled up next to Olsen and Mahoney at the bottom of the Mound. They were lying in the snow staring up the face of it, the way infantrymen attacking a bunker might. They looked about as scared too.

"Who's on top?" I asked.

"Who do you think?"

It was a stupid question. In my four-plus years in school I had only known one permanent king of the mountain: Dan Delund.

"Whhhhooooaaaaa! Look out!"

Zilinski came crashing down next to us—Delund's first victim of the season.

"I think he just broke my nose. He's really not kidding around up there this year."

We were never quite certain what grade Dan "King of the Mountain" Delund was actually enrolled in, as the vast majority of his time was spent in such foreign districts as the principal's office and the Ben Franklin cigarette counter. He wore Mötley Crüe T-shirts and steel-toed boots and would often give himself pen tattoos of daggers and snakes—or if he was really feeling creative, daggers stabbing snakes. He stood about five foot five, a hundred and twenty pounds. This made him about a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than anyone else foolishly attempting to knock him from his pedestal. Delund was basically the Andre the Giant of HC Wilson. And he was twice as mean.

Mahoney tapped my arm. "Look at these idiots."

From our vantage point we could see a platoon of second graders try to rush Delund from behind. He spun around and stiff-armed them two at a time. Laughing hysterically, he tossed a few right back down the hill; others, he tackled and whitewashed before discarding their bodies. The defeat of an entire class took about fifteen seconds.

Olsen peered over my shoulder. "I hear he's already got hair under his pits."

A crying second grader crawled up next to us, sans hat and gloves, which were now resting somewhere on the other side of the Mound. A tactic Delund had undoubtedly dreamt up in the off-season.

"He took my gloves! He took my hat! He threw them in a puddle! Why-eeeee?"

"Get yourself together, man!" shouted Mahoney, grabbing the kid by the shoulders. "Don't let him see the fear! You do that and we're all dead!"

Every group of friends growing up has an Army Guy friend. You know the type. Camouflage bedspread, eats GI Joe cereal, actually watches WWII movies with his dad. Mahoney was our Army Guy friend. He got to see Platoon at age seven and had since developed a keen sense for war and injustice. A game of laser tag was not just a game of laser tag to Matt Mahoney. It was an exercise in truth.

Up on the Mound, Delund was now hurling down snowballs and insults.

"You babies! Is that all you got? I said, is that all you got?"

Mahoney hawked a loogie in disgust. "Somebody's gotta put a stop to this guy. I can't take another year of this. Doyle, are you with me?"

"Right now?"

"Olsen, how 'bout you? Aren't you getting a little sick of this?"

"Uh, I don't know, Matt... I got my nice snow pants on..."

"We'll attack him head-on. He'll never expect it from the three of us. Goonies never say die, right?"

"Yeah, but—"

"LET'S GET HIM! RRRRRRAAAAAAHHH!"

Before Olsen and I knew what had hit us, we were charging up the mountain like some kind of Ken Burns documentary, caught up in a moment of sweeping music and freedom. If I'd had a Union flag, I would have been waving it wildly. Delund's eyes locked with Mahoney's. He pushed up his sweatshirt sleeves, exposing a few bleeding snakes, and took off in a dead sprint toward us. The King was not about to go quietly.

"GRRRRAAAAAGHHHH!"

Flanking Mahoney, Olsen and I were immediately close-lined by Delund's outstretched arms. WHACK. WHACK. Mahoney was able to withstand Delund's initial body check, but it didn't matter. In a split second he was met with a roundhouse kick to the face. The next twenty seconds were blurry, but from what I do remember, there were a lot of dead legs and DDTs, followed by some serious retreating. Mahoney's "plan," while brave, was incredibly stupid. We nursed our wounds at the bottom of the hill.

"Almost, fellas, almost."

Olsen checked his snow pants. "I think he stole my milk money."

The ping of the electronic HC Wilson school bell sounded off in the distance. Delund was once again victorious. He trotted down the hill, smiling and gleeking on us as we all filed into the building to face another day.

Ah... third grade.

Standing at the door's entrance, sniffling into Kleenex as usual, was our teacher Mrs. Hugo, affectionately known by all of us as Mrs. Huge-Blow. She was sick and perturbed today, as she had been every other day in her fifteen-year career.

"Walk, don't run, children, walk, don't run... I said don't run!"

Josh Farmer came galloping up in his moon boots beside us. "Hey. Did you guys hear what the sixth graders are saying yet?"

Was it something like "stop talking to us, Farmer, you're annoying"?

"No, Farmer," Olsen humored him, "what are they saying?"

"Okay... So, I'm down at Fun Times Roller Rink, right, hanging out with the sixth graders as usual, you know, no big deal..."

More often than not, around Farmer's second sentence I would try to tune out and think of something else. It was the only way to avoid punching him in the mouth. I caught a glimpse of Miss Ciarocci in the Learning Center as we passed by. She was laughing with Mr. Murphy, the fifth grade teacher and a recent Wisconsin transplant. I did not like the way this looked. She was touching the arm of his stupid Green Bay Packer's jacket... Screw you, Mr. Murphy. Let's see you make a Christmas tree ornament project of an entire manger scene. (That was my new plan, by they way—manger scene ornament—with donkeys and wise men and all that junk). Ciarocci gave a glance in my direction and flashed a smile. In my head I gave her a cool nod back, but in reality I'm pretty sure I just stared at her with my mouth open.

"Jake. Jake!" Olsen was elbowing me. "Are you listening to this?"

"What?" I asked.

"Farmer says the top Cub Scout wreath seller this year gets a Nintendo."

I stopped dead in my tracks. A Nintendo? From the Cub Scouts? Was that even possible? Every year in Cub Scouts we would have to sell Christmas wreaths. It was a fundraiser for the organization and basically meant giving up a quality Sunday afternoon in front of the TV to traipse around the neighborhood with my dad, trying to get old ladies to place orders. Last year I'd sold a grand total of five, three of them going to my grandparents. I was a horrible salesman. I always chalked it up to a lack of motivation, though. Usually the sales prizes were things like Webelo belt buckles or plastic canteens—basically, junk. But if the top prize was a Nintendo, then this was a whole new ballgame. But this was Farmer we were listening to here, not exactly a reliable source for information.

"Bull crud," I said.

"Bull true," lisped Farmer. "A Nintendo, with games and everything."

"Bull. Crud."

"Bull totally true."

"Totally true like how your dad has a Babe Ruth rookie card?"

"Or totally true like how Murdoch from the A-Team is your uncle?"

"You guys don't have to believe me. I'm gonna win it anyway. I already sold sixty-seven wreaths already."

"To who?"

"People... your mom."

"You're full of it, Farmer."

"Says who?"

"Says me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

Suddenly a hand shoved a snowball directly in Farmer's mouth.

"Yeah," said Dan Delund, laughing hysterically. We all joined in.

Delund spun around. "Only I laugh."

We all shut up.


The humidifier in the corner bubbled and hissed as Mrs. Hugo paced around the classroom, occasionally pulling used Kleenex from her sleeves to blow her nose.

We were all spread out on the hard orange carpet, partaking in another one of her "educational exercises" designed to get us to shut the hell up. We were a terrible class.

Looking back, it wasn't really Huge-Blow's fault. Our class that year would've done any teacher in. We were loud and unruly, a gang of germ-infested, sugar-fueled heathens. And during the Christmas season? Forget it. The class was a time bomb just waiting to go off. It didn't matter that she had us all lying on the carpet listening to a New Age "relaxing" record. Silence and order weren't in the cards for us.

The Relax Records, as they came to be known, seemed like something Ciarocci would've had sitting around her apartment. They were very hippie-esque. You could picture Ciarocci going home, lighting some candles (and whatnot) and making a night of it. Maybe she'd recommended them to Huge-Blow as a way to calm us down. But in an actual classroom setting, with a bunch of nine-year-olds, Huge-Blow was by no means capable of pulling it off.

"We're relaxing, children. Our minds need to be relaxed to think. Now everyone close your eyes"—nose blow, nose blow —"and listen to the lady on the"—sniffle —"record."

Unfortunately, the lady on the record sounded like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Eeyore. She wasn't relaxing; she was hilarious.

"Oooooh kaaaay, nowwwww. Feeeeeeel the waaaaaater. Feeeeeeel it wash away your emmmmmotions."

Ha! Yes, female hippie Eeyore. Feel it, feel it.

"The sunnnnnn shines as you driffffft offfffff down the peaceful blue streeeeeeeeam..."

Down on the carpet things were far from peaceful. Nintendo prize rumors had been circulating like Mario Bros. fireballs all morning. With each hour that passed, however unlikely the stories, it became more and more believable that the Cub Scouts might actually be offering an NES to the top seller. Tommy Grusecki whispered the latest.

"Ryan heard first prize comes with a Power Pad. Pass it on."

I rolled over to Zilinski. "First prize comes with a Power Pad. Pass it on."

Huge-Blow hovered above us. "This is quiet time, children. We're relaxing now."

Zilinski rolled over to Olsen. "First prize comes with the Power Pad."

"The Power Pad!"

"RELAX!" yelled Huge-Blow.

"Together we all breathe in. Then breathe out. We breathe the good in and breathe the bad out. Breeeeeeathe in and breeeeeathe out, breeeeeeeeeathe in, breeeeeeeathe out—"

BURRRRFFFFTTT. Delund ripped a hard one. Wet and smelly.

"Dan Delund!"

"My butt's gotta breathe too, Mrs. Hugo!"

The class erupted. Delund yelled a late "Door knob!" which under bully rules meant he could now hit whomever he pleased, even if it had in fact been his own fart. You had to hand it to him. He got a few jabs in before Huge-Blow pulled him off and sat him in the "time out chair." Relaxing time was officially over. She strode up to the board and put another check after Delund's name.

"Back in your seats!"

Falling far short of his career average of six checks before lunch, it could only be assumed that Nintendo gossip had sidetracked even Delund.

Lunchtime at HC Wilson was not so much a time to eat as it was a time to do business. Apples for fruit cups, Kudos for Lunchables, PB&J for pop—there was no trade too big, no barter too small. For half an hour a day, every kid in the cafeteria became a hustler. It was cutthroat. If Mike Tuetken accidentally got two Twinkies in his lunch, you better have a line on it and you better show up to his table with fruit snacks or higher, or you weren't getting any. No slouch myself, I'm not ashamed to say that I once lifted a jumbo pack of Extra Winterfresh from Kleen's gum drawer and, stick by stick, managed to get him to trade me his Fruit Roll-Ups everyday for a month. One hundred percent markup. Score, Doyle.

There were two fundamental types of lunch people. You had the "hot lunchers" and the "sack lunchers." Very rarely did you ever have a kid who mixed and matched. You were one or the other. They were like religions, passed down through generations, like Protestant or Catholic. It was in your blood. You're a sack luncher, son. I don't care how great your friends at school say Taco Day is. Your grandfather didn't sell the family pig and come to this country with negative three cents to see his family turn into a bunch of limp-wristed hot lunchers!

There were pros and cons to each religion, of course. Sack lunchers had to bow down to the parental gods, who were ill tempered and forgetful and, more often than not, cheap. For years I suffered under the delusion that Cheez Whiz sandwiches were delicious. Cheez Whiz sandwiches, for crying out loud! In what world is a Cheez Whiz sandwich an acceptable meal? Sure, cafeteria food could get a bad rap for being smelly and gross, but at least you knew it had to pass some kind of government nutritional standard. With a sack lunch you were on your own, left to the whims of mom and pop. Sometimes there would be no Butter-Nut bar at the bottom of the sack. Sometimes there would just be a crummy old pear. Sometimes you would end up with your sister's celery sticks. Then what? All you could do was offer them up to the dumpster spirits and hope for grace tomorrow.

Then there was the sack itself. That was reason enough to warrant a hot lunch conversion right there. Sacks were undependable, unpredictable. Condensation, rips, tears, rain, snow, wresting matches—you had to be careful. Five-second rules were hard to apply when your graham crackers were floating in a puddle. You also couldn't trust yourself with a sack lunch. What if you got hungry early? Say, on a bus field trip or on the long walk to school? A little bite of that salami sandwich could get you through it. But one little bite could turn into ten little bites plus a bag of Cheetos, and if you weren't careful you could end up with no lunch at all come lunchtime. There was no trading out of that situation.

Sack lunchers had their perks, though. Leftover birthday cake could wind up in a sack lunch. So could last night's Salano's pizza or Aunt Cubby's cookies. But hot lunch had its advantages as well. For starters, it was hot. In the dead of a Chicago February that didn't go unnoticed. Secondly, it wasn't going to get left on the bus or in the fridge at home. It was guaranteed. Third, you didn't have to think about it. No preparation required whatsoever, just get the ticket punched, get the tray, get the spork and dig in. And finally, every Friday at HC Wilson was Spaghetti Friday—with garlic bread. And that garlic bread smelled pretty friggin' good. I'll admit it, I thought about converting to hot lunch several times. In first grade I even took a little nip of Missy Pearson's mashed potatoes on a bet, but ultimately I decided they weren't for me. Despite the occasional Cheez Whiz sandwich, I was a sack-lunch man. It was hereditary.

When we weren't making deals or actually eating, lunchtime conversation usually flowed in question form. Deep, philosophical exchanges that touched on all the current third grade worldviews: Q: Will the Bears win another Super Bowl this year?

A: Yes. Without a doubt. It's pointless to even question it.

Q: Could Duran Duran beat up Wham!?

A: Huey Lewis could take them both.

Q: Who's cooler, the California Raisins or the Domino's Noid?

A: Are you a idiot? The California Raisins. Where are you getting these questions?

Q: Are you in love with Kleen's sister?

A: I don't want to talk about it.

Q: Sox or Cubs?

A: Cubs. Carlton Fisk is a fatso. Ryne Sandburg is awesome.

Q: Karate Kid the movie or Karate Kid the cartoon?

A: Cartoon. There's way more fighting in the cartoon.

Q: Cosby Show or Family Ties?

A: Hmm, good one. Gotta go Cosbys.

Q: Transformers or Gobots?

A: Gobots.

Q: Why Gobots?

A: They're hardcore.

Q: Optimus Prime is hardcore.

A: Optimus Prime should be in Wham!, that's how unhardcore he is.

Q: Okay, Voltron or Gobots?

A: Gobots.

Q: Seriously, what's with you and Gobots?

A: You're not even asking me questions anymore.

Q: Yes, I am.

A: No, you're not.

Q: Yes, I am.

A: No, you're not.

Q: Fine. Hi-C or Capri Sun?

A: Ecto-Coolers do not exist within the Capri Sun family, therefore, Hi-C. In fact I will make that trade with you right now, Evan Olsen. Thank you very much.

Of course, as anyone can tell you, the best part of lunch was recess. What better way to spend the twenty minutes immediately following mass intake of Doritos and pop than running around at full speed in subzero temperatures? Hooray, recess!

We all scrambled to our cubbies in the hall and began putting on the necessary layers. Mysterious lunch ladies bustled around us, zipping up kindergarteners' coats and jamming mittens on fingers. Time was of the essence. If you didn't get outside quick enough, you ran the risk of missing the draft selection for the daily blacktop football game. That was bad. That meant you had to sit in a snowbank and watch, or worse, hang out with girls.

"Jake Doyle."

I turned to find Mrs. Huge-Blow lurking over me. Man, did she ever take a break?

"Is there something you want to tell me, Jake?"

I find it hard to believe that you're employed as a third grade teacher when you seem to inherently despise children?

"Uh, no..."

"You've been disobeying school rules, Jake. Don't think I'm not watching you."

"Uh..."

She pointed down at my shoes with a used Kleenex.

"If you go out in the snow once more without wearing boots, your name goes up on the board, with a check. Snow rules. No boots, no recess."

"Boots?"

"Boots. You have boots, right?"

Oh, man...


In 1983, Boy George released a song called "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" A catchy little cross-dressing reggae tune, it has since become the soundtrack to my girls' boots nightmare. Whenever it comes on the radio or VH1 plays the video on some celebrities-turned-junkies countdown, I find myself weeping softly. Some guys wince at the memory of dropping a ball in a big high school game, others spend years regretting "the one who got away." Me, hardly a month goes by that I don't wake up at night in a cold sweat to Boy George ringing in my ears and little red Esprits flashing in the darkness.

So it was, that fateful Monday afternoon in December when I finally had to venture out in my girls' boots and face the music.

I did so by standing behind a tree.

Out on the blacktop I could see the teams already being picked for football. As always, Zilinski and Delund were captains. Traditional draft etiquette was usually lost on Delund. He skipped such formalities as taking turns and pretty much just took whomever he wanted. Even if that meant the teams were stacked thirty-seven guys versus Zilinski and four second graders.

"I pick first, I got Padula."

Zilinski tried to counter. "Okay, um, I got—"

"And Schafer and Schmidt. Kramer, Mueller, Nelson, I got you too."

"Hey, no fair, you gotta—"

"The Hussa brothers, Mahoney, Pendrock, DeGemis."

"You can't do it like that, Delund, I have to—"

"Wattendorf, Merlini, Olsen aaand... Gubbins."

Ryan Gubbins, a portly fourth grader, trotted over, surprised at his selection.

"I got your gloves, fatso," said Delund, promptly relieving him of his prized Bears receiver's gloves. "You got the rest, Zilinski. You kick."

I watched Zilinski and his team of rejects trot back toward the near end of the blacktop. I could tell he was looking for me. In blacktop football, two complete passes, no matter how short, were enough to warrant a first down. Since it was rare that anyone would ever cover me, I was usually open, and that was the only way Zilinski ever kept the score close: short dump-off passes to Doyle. Team Loser needed me.

"Jake!" Zilinski spotted me behind the tree. "What are you doing over there? We kick off."

Casually, I tried to shoo him away. "I'm, uh, taking a leak. Play without me!"

"Is there a dead squirrel back there again?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm peeing on a dead squirrel. I'll be there in a minute!"

It was no use. Zilinski hustled over with the ball.

"You're peeing on a dead squirrel? What kind of a sick—" He stopped dead in his tracks and looked down. An expression usually reserved for horror movies or broken windows slowly washed over his face.

"Holy... shit..."

"I know."

"Dude, you're wearing Katie Sorrentino's boots."

"They're mine," I stammered.

"Holy... sh..."

"I know, alright."

"What are you gonna do?"

"I don't know."

"If Delund sees you he's going to kill you."

"Do you think I don't know that?"

Answering too many math questions correctly, having insufficient cough drops for the taking, these were all grounds for physical retaliation. But girls' boots? Delund had once thrown Ronnie Dobber in a dumpster because there was a rumor going around that his favorite GI Joe was Lady Jaye.

"Hey!" Delund yelled. He was running through the snow toward us. "You're kicking off, Zilinski, let's go."

"I'm coming."

"Is there a dead squirrel back there again? I got dibs on it if its guts are all out and bloody and—"

Delund took one look at my boots and slowed to a halt. Like a hunter coming up on a shotgun-wielding deer in the middle of a clearing, his mind was blown. Completely. He stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do. Bewilderment and anger had rendered him helpless, as if his bully instincts weren't fully capable of handling such a grave situation.

"What the... Boyle? Are those...?"

"Uh, listen, Dan..."

I might as well have been inviting him to a My Little Pony sleepover. My mind flipped through the Rolodex of punishment I was sure to endure. Weeks of wedgies, whitewashings, dead legs, dead arms, dead torsos, DDTs, possible Indian burnings, swirlies... I took out my retainer in preparation. Zilinski, God bless him, tried to create a distraction.

"Hey, Delund, let's go play some football, huh? We kick."

Delund just stiff-armed him to the ground. "I think we got ourselves a pair of girls' boots here."

"Wait, wait, there's this high schooler, okay," I tried pathetically. "He bet me a hundred bucks I wouldn't wear these boots to school. It's a joke, alright, I—"

"Not buying it, Boyle. You're about to pay up. Big time."

Quickly I went over my options. Running away always looked appealing, but I knew better. That just meant further punishment. Fighting back was just plain stupid. No, the best plan of attack was to take a beating now and be done with it. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I could feel Delund's beef-jerky breath on my face as he grabbed me by the coat and lifted me up in the air. But somewhere off in the distance I heard a high-pitched lisp. It was the voice of an angel...

"HEY GUYS! HEY, YOU GUYS! CHECK IT OUT!"

Midair, I opened my eyes to see an out-of-breath Farmer sprinting toward us, waving around a green piece of paper like it was the cure for chicken pox.

"I GOT IT! I got it right here. Proof! Proof it's NINTENDO!"

At the word "Nintendo," Delund chucked me into a bush.

"What do you mean, you got proof? Proof of what?"

"Proof that the Cub Scout first prize is a Nintendo. It says so right here, right in the Cub Scout take-home note for today. Look!"

Farmer handed the note to Delund. Delund flipped it over a few times.

"Just a picture of a dumb wreath, so what?"

"You gotta read it."

A crowd had now gathered around. I watched quietly from the shrubbery, trying to bury my feet in the snow. This was bigger news than girls' boots any day.

Farmer read from the note. "This year's first prize comes courtesy of Geitner Toys and Books. A perfect addition to any living room. The new Nintendo Entertainment System!"

Delund grabbed the note again and strung the words together. It was there alright, in dotted black computer ink. "The new... Nintendo Enter-tain-ment Sys-tem."

By God, little Farmer had struck gold.

A collective cheer went up among us—hugs and high fives all around. Delund went as far as patting Farmer on the back before laughing directly in Kleen's face and shoving him into a tree. And for a brief moment, my girls' boots became a neglected sideshow. It was all I needed. Quietly, and without detection, I scurried off to hide behind the dumpster. No one else had noticed the boots. I was in the clear.

Ecstatic on several levels, I sat there in the stink and the mush and began to contemplate the biggest wreath-selling campaign to ever hit Batavia.


The problem with having only one Nintendo prize in an already hostile one-Nintendo town is that it makes enemies out of everybody. There was no more "us versus Kleen" mentality. It was now every man for himself. Big or small, smart or dumb, first grade or fourth, it didn't matter anymore. You sold the most wreaths, you won a life of bliss and happiness; it was as simple as that. Plans were already being hatched in notebook margins, and battle lines were being drawn in the snow.

Immediately following the Cub Scout take-home note revelation, Tommy Grusecki faked an earache and was sent home for the rest of the school day, where he was now, no doubt, out on the streets going door to door selling wreaths. It was a gutsy move for a three-hour head start, and I already hated him for it. By 1 p.m., wreath-selling exit strategies were running rampant. Matt Mahoney got caught trying to sneak out of PE, and half the fifth grade gifted program staged an unsuccessful classroom walkout designed as a nuclear-arms protest. The gauntlet had been laid down. If even the smart kids were willing to risk disciplinary action for Nintendo, I had to get my act together.

So I came up with a plan. It was simple but daring just the same. Sometime in the middle of our afternoon quiz on the magic of petrified wood, it started to come to me. I wouldn't sneak out, per se—that had already been proven nearly impossible. At the end of the day I would simply leave faster than everyone else. I only lived about a half mile from school. It was the kid/bully/teacher/bus/minivan traffic jam that always delayed my departure. There were times it took me a good ten minutes just to get outside the building after the final bell. If I could circumvent said traffic jam, then I could be home and selling wreaths almost a full half hour before most other Cub Scouts even got their sales sheets out.

Basically, my plan was this: don't go to my locker, head straight for the fire escape, beat the rush, exit the school and sprint like crazy home. It was a good plan. Straightforward. Clean. The only problem was, it meant I wouldn't have access to such take-home necessities as, you know... a coat. No gloves, hat or scarf either. That posed a bit of a problem.

Now, I'd heard of frostbite. I'd seen Empire Strikes Back, I knew the dangers of Hoth, but that was the movies. And frankly, Luke Skywalker could be kind of a pussy. I was not a pussy. I was Jake Doyle—Man of Action. I was certainly not afraid of a little frostbite. To me, the term sounded like some kind of Dairy Queen concoction served in miniature batting helmets. This summer, the Frostbite! With real Snickers! That's coooool! So what was the worst that could happen? Lose a toe? What's one toe? Even losing a couple fingers was worth it if it meant getting Nintendo. I could be cold when I was dead.

These were the thoughts racing through my head as I turned in my petrified-wood quiz. Not my best effort. It would later earn me a 26% and a phone call home. Apparently it's not spelled "petra-fried." Huge-Blow was a stickler for spelling. The cold witch.

I sat there in my chair and inconspicuously popped the collar of my imitation Ocean Pacific polo shirt, doing my best to convince myself that this was not a fashion statement but rather a practical maneuver ensuring warmth on the way home. I gave Angela Moran my best Don Johnson look and smiled. I'd always wanted to wear the collar up in school but never had the guts. See? Nintendo was bringing out the best in me already. I watched the clock tick down to two thirty and laced up my Walter Payton KangaRoos...

PING. PING— I leapt out of my seat and bolted out the classroom fire door before the third bell had even registered. Huge-Blow may have noticed, but I was out of disciplinary range before she could say anything. I rounded an icy corner and took off like a shot, my heart pounding at near audible decibels. "Danger Zone" was pumping through my imaginary headphones. I was in the zone. I skidded out toward the sidewalk and kicked it into overdrive.

You know what? This wasn't bad at all. Heck, I wasn't even cold. Not even a little bit. Ha! I raced through the school grounds and dodged a few oncoming station wagons. The crossing guard didn't even have time to look up. I was doing it!

The first block was a blur of houses and mailboxes. I crossed onto the second block and smiled to myself, taking what might have been my first real breath since I'd come outside. I turned the corner onto Jackson Street and—oh my God, this was terrible. What the hell was I thinking? My body suddenly began to scream at me. "It's nine degrees out, you fool!" All of a sudden I couldn't feel my legs. My chest was on fire. A wave of panic washed over me. I began panting, wheezing, slowing to a crawl. "Don't stop now, stupid! Keep going!" My hands were turning white. I tucked my thumbs under my forefingers, clenching my fists. The irony of winning a Nintendo now and not having the thumbs to play it was beginning to sink in. Panicking, I looked around. Was I past the halfway point? I was. It was too late to go back. My adrenaline was fading fast. Reality was smacking me in the face. Would I die out here? Could that happen? Maybe Skywalker wasn't such a pussy after all.

Quickly, I hopped over a snowbank and went for the middle of the road. That way, I thought, if I passed out, or died or whatever, while running, then at least a car could come by and see me and take me to a hospital. A part of me thought, well, if I did almost die trying to get a Nintendo, maybe my parents, or some good Samaritan, would actually buy me one for Christmas. "Christ, the kid almost died for this thing, give him the Nintendo, for crying out loud." Yeah, that was it. The thought of a tragic near-death experience perked me up a bit. I dug down deeper and found my footing. Pain did not exist in this dojo.

Nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds after the final bell, I burst into my house, a frozen, crazed wreath salesmen.

"How was school, honey?" my mom asked from the kitchen.

"Blaaaah! Rhaaaah!"

This was no time for pleasantries. I pushed past her and ran directly upstairs, no doubt tracking snow and madness all over the carpet.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Lizzy took note. "He didn't have his coat on. Did you notice that?"

"I did, Lizzy, yes. I'll talk to him."

"If he catches pneumonia, can we get a chameleon?"

"No, Lizzy, we're not getting a chameleon. Drink your hot chocolate."

"Do you know what we learned in school today, Mommy?"

"What's that?"

"We learned about Brazil."

"Really?"

"Yes, it's in South America. They speak Portuguese there. Most people don't know that, but I do. Portuguese comes from Portugal." Lizzy helped herself to a cookie, nibbling thoughtfully as she went in for the kill. "Do you think they have Cabbage Patch dolls in Portugal?"

Ah, yes indeed, there were other Christmas plots hatching in the Doyle house.

"Well, Lizzy, I don't really—"

WHOOSH. I came flying back down through the kitchen, buttoning up my Cub Scout uniform and pulling up my long johns. A peculiar itchy feeling was slowly returning to my hands and feet. And the "petra-fried" snot around my nose was beginning to thaw. Looking back, I probably did get frostbite. But screw it. It was worth it.

"Where's the clipboard? The clipboard!" I screamed.

"It's in the junk drawer. Where are you—?"

I was already out the door. Lizzy took another sip of her hot cocoa, unaffected. "They probably don't have Cabbage Patch dolls in Portugal. Those poor, poor children of Portugal..."

It had been only fifteen minutes since school let out and I was already fitted in my dress blues and on my way, secretly envisioning the acres of Alaskan pine forests needed to cover the number of wreaths I was about to sell. I pulled down my Cub Scout stocking cap and threw on my backup gloves. There were no other scouts in sight. The neighborhood was mine. I rushed up the steps of the broken-down yellow house on the corner, poised to make my first sale. I knocked confidently and waited.

Oh, I had the sales pitch all planned out. It was brilliant. I practiced it quietly in my head. "Well, the Cub Scouts have been around for hundreds of years, ma'am. Striving for truth and justice and the overall goodness of America as we know it! Without your help, thousands of boys may become drug addicts and communists before the year 1997. All we need from you is a bit of generosity that can be displayed throughout the holiday season in the form of a marvelous Merry Christmas wreath!"

The door opened, revealing a man who might best be described as dangerous. He wore a wifebeater and a scowl that suggested, to me at least, that he was once in a motorcycle gang. This was not good.

"Whaddya want?"

I stood there, blubbering. "Uh, um, uh..."

"Look, kid, they got Ditka on WGN right now tellin' ethnic jokes, what is it?"

"Uh, communists, 1997..."

"What?"

Come on, pull it together. "Uh, sir, I..."

"Wait a second. You're not trying to sell me something, are ya? Are ya!?"

"Uh, bluhhh..."

"Can't you read?" His index finger shot over to a white sign on the door three inches from my face. In big block letters, it read: NO SOLICITORS.

Solicitors? Oh no, see, I'm with the Cub Scouts, sir, completely different type of situation here. "But... uh, wreaths. You wanna buy a wreath?"

The man looked at me as though I'd just told him Mike Ditka shaved his legs. In disbelief he placed the palm of his hand on the top of my head. Slowly he tilted it upward. Hanging there on his door, a few inches from the NO SOLICITORS sign, was, in fact, a Christmas wreath. I was selling a guy who didn't want to be sold anything something he already had.

"Jeeez-us kid." He shook his head. "You must be retarded."

I stood there with my mouth open slightly and tried to smile.

"Wait a second. You're not really retarded, are you?"

I shook my head no.

"Good." He slammed the door shut, pine needles grazing my nose. This was going to be harder than I thought.

By now, ninety percent of the male population of HC Wilson Elementary was hitting the pavement, hawking wreaths door to door. It was a little astounding when you thought about it. I mean, not even ninety percent of us went door to door trick-or-treating. Nintendo had become the grade school equivalent of the hottest, most popular girl in high school. And this wreath-selling contest was comparable to her winking at each and every one of us in the hallway. It had hypnotized us, infatuated us, given us all false hope. It didn't matter that only one of us could have her. We were all convinced that she would be ours. Nintendo had us in her clutches and we'd do anything to get her.

A whole new level of single-minded madness had taken over. Christmas lists to grandmothers weren't even lists anymore, they'd become declarations—one word on a sheet of notebook paper: Nintendo. No backups, no stocking stuffers, no subcategories filled with requests for "Super Bowl Shuffle" cassettes or He-Man accessories. It was Nintendo or nothing. Teddy Ruxpin, pack your bags, my friend, your fifteen minutes were over.

Determined, I walked down Watson Street to Miss Sherman's house. In Chicago Bears terms, if I was quarterback Jim McMahon (which, when wearing my Adidas headband, I often thought I was), Miss Sherman would be my Willie Gault. She was my go-to receiver, an automatic catch, an instant gain of eight yards. Miss Sherman would buy a box of rocks from me as long as I spent a little time with her. She was approximately a hundred and fifty years old, and next to my grandparents, she'd been my only sale the year before. It had taken me an hour and a half inside her cat-infested living room, but she'd bought two wreaths and an order of garland. Certainly, Miss Sherman would start things out right this year.

Optimistically, I rang the doorbell.

"Who is it?" Miss Sherman yelled over the stampede of seven thousand cats.

"It's Jake Doyle from across the street."

"Whooooo?"

"Miss Sherman, it's—"

"Miss Sherman? I'm Miss Sherman."

"Yes, I know, Miss Sherman, it's—"

"Who is it?"

"It's Jake—"

"Whooooooo?"

"JAKE DOYLE. FROM ACROSS THE STREET."

"Oh, Jake! Come on in!"

She opened the door. Nine cats jumped on my face. I went inside.

Walking into Miss Sherman's house was a little bit like walking into church. It always smelled like something was burning and you knew you weren't leaving for at least an hour. The place was hairy and unkempt, much like Miss Sherman herself. She stood about four foot eight, a hundred pounds, and as always, was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. She was a hugger too.

"Oh, it's soooooo good-ta see ya, Jake! What kinda things are they teaching you in school these days?"

"Oh, I don't know, stuff."

"How's your little sister, Lizzy?"

"Okay, I guess."

"You guess? You tell her she needs to come see me. I haven't seen her in ages. She's so cute. And smart as a whip, that one."

"I'll be sure to tell her, Miss Sherman. So, I've got some wreaths to—"

"Would ya like a nice glass of milk?"

"Um..."

"And some nice ham sandwiches? You sit down right here and I'll come back with some nice ham sandwiches and some milk and you can tell me all about school."

Sweet.

I swatted away a few cats and settled on the couch. It was at least ninety degrees in there. I was already beginning to sweat through my merit badges. She called back from inside the kitchen.

"I'm gonna warm the milk up for ya! Nice and hot to warm you up!"

"Super."

I glanced around the room. It was WWII-era ancient, the kind of room that looked like it came straight out of It's a Wonderful Life, except without any of that Donna Reed cleanliness. Doilies were everywhere, little glass vases, knickknacks, crafts, plates of various American prairie landscapes hung up on the walls. A mound of Life magazines rested in the corner, serving both as feline jungle gym and permanent fire hazard. And then there was the kicker—no TV. How could someone live like this? Maybe it was the light fading outside or the shadows in the house, but when you were in there it seriously felt like you'd entered real-life black and white, like you were Dorothy still in Kansas. Or better yet, a POW in Stalag 17. There was no escape from Miss Sherman's domicile.

I glanced out the window. Far down the street I could see a few tiny dots of blue on the horizon trudging along the sidewalk. Cub Scouts were already treading onto my turf.

"I'm gonna heat up the sandwiches too, make 'em nice and warm! I just gotta find that grill cheese maker my son sent me. Would you like to see pictures of my son? He lives in Hollywood. He works in the movies."

This was gonna be tricky.

Earlier in the afternoon, I'd run the wreath-selling numbers in the back of my Trapper Keeper. It was a good place to do math, what with the complimentary metric-system conversion table and all. Basically, I figured I'd have to sell at least fifty wreaths to be in the running for first prize. That was just over five wreaths a day, a tall order, especially if I was stuck here in cat land for too much longer. I needed to close this deal and get back out there and sell as quickly as possible.

"Here you go. Some nice sandwiches and some milk."

"Thanks, Miss Sherman."

I took two big bites and a big warm gulp; it was best to get it down fast. Not only did you taste less, but it also looked like you were enjoying it—skills I'd learned from my mother's experimental cooking. In twenty seconds I'd already burned three-fourths of my mouth and polished off half a sandwich.

"My goodness, don't they feed you at home?"

"It's just so good, Miss Sherman. Mmmmmm."

"So, tell me all about school, why-don't-ya?"

"School's fine."

"What are you learning? Tell me all about it."

"Oh, nothing really."

"Nothing? Its gotta be something. Come on, tell me. Come on..."

Oh God, seriously? There wasn't much worse than being asked what you were learning in school. It was like getting out of Chino for the night and being asked how it was inside. It sucked, all right. School sucked. We learned about stuff, we ate lunch, we had recess, we learned about more stuff, we went home. Why did adults want us to talk about it so badly? I was a free man right now. I was out of school; why would I want to talk about it? It was bad enough I had to memorize the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System without having to turn it into interesting conversation.

"I'm not letting you leave until you tell me all about it, Jake."

Sherman wasn't messing around. Casually, I fed a cat a bit of a sandwich under the coffee table, stalling for time. I had to give her something, something educational, something that was engaging enough to satisfy her but also bland enough not to spark a two-hour lecture on the Great Depression or photos of her son. Quickly my mind shifted into salesman mode.

"Actually, we're learning about pine trees right now..."

Yes sir, this was going to work.

"Really."

"Yes, it's fascinating stuff. Did you know that the state of Alaska has over a million acres of pine trees alone?"

"I didn't know that."

Probably because I just made it up.

"That's right. Pine trees have a very unique, uh, way to do photo-syn, uh, photo... photosynthesis, that's it. Did you know that? Photosynthesis? That's why they make such great Christmas trees."

"You're right, they do make good Christmas trees. You know, I need to start putting up my Christmas decorations myself."

"Funny you should mention that, Miss Sherman..."

It took another hour inside, but when I came out I'd managed to sell the woman more wreaths than she had doors on her house. God bless you, Miss Sherman. The only problem was, it was now getting dark outside. I only had half an hour before I had to be home for supper. I looked down the street and saw Josh Farmer making his way toward me. The little twerp was even wearing a tie. It matched the smug look on his fat face.

"Heard you ran home without a coat, Doyle."

"What's it to ya?" I snapped.

"Just seems a little desperate, is all."

"You seem a little des... perate."

"You don't even know what 'desperate' means."

"No, you don't know what it means."

"No, you don't."

"No, you don't."

"You don't times a million."

"You don't times a million, times ten. Period. No erasing."

That shut him up.

Farmer gave a nod toward Sherman's house, clicking the multicolor pen in his mittened hand. "Going the old-lady route, eh? Gotta have a good exit strategy to pull that off. Me, I steer clear of old ladies. Too much hassle, not enough profitability."

Who was this guy? Gordon Gekko?

"Whatever, Farmer. You shouldn't be on my block anyway."

"And why's that?"

"Because it's my block. That's the rule."

"You think there are rules here, Doyle? There are no rules. The only rules are gonna be the ones that say you gotta take your shoes off when you come into my mom's house to play my Nintendo."

This was getting ugly now. Did Jake Doyle have to hit a Cub Scout?

"We'll see."

"You bet we will."

We stared each other down for a moment, neither of us flinching. He clicked his pen. I pulled my No. 2 pencil from behind my ear. Somewhere off in the distance a Metra train piped out an eerie whistle. A plastic Jewel bag turned tumbleweed blew across the sidewalk between us. It was a suburban showdown.

"That Nintendo's mine," I hissed. "You'll never win it."

"Watch me."

With that, Farmer turned and ran up the steps of the house next door to Mrs. Sherman's: the O'Brien house. I'd tried there last year and came up with nothing. He'd never sell them a wreath. They went to Florida every year for Christmas. Sometimes they didn't even bother putting up a tree. Even when they did it was the plastic kind. The house was a total dead end.

"Good luck with that one, dipstick!"

Farmer rang the bell. Mrs. O'Brien answered.

"Yes?"

"Hello, ma'am, my name's Josh. That's a lovely blouse you're wearing."

"Thank you, young man. What can I do for you?"

"Well, ma'am, I just have one question to ask you. Do you love your country?"

Son of a bitch. Farmer was good. Mrs. O'Brien smiled and led him inside. It was obvious I couldn't waste any more time watching this go down. I hustled down the block and got to work. I had less than thirty minutes to get as many houses as I could before Farmer stole them right out from under me.

"Hey, uh, Brett," I said to the five-year-old who answered the door. "Is your mom home?"

"She's at work still. Tiffany the babysitter's here."

"Who is it?" yelled an annoyed Tiffany from somewhere inside.

"It's Jake Doyle from down the street." I leaned down. "Listen, Brett. Here's the deal. How'd you like to play my Nintendo?"

"You got a Nintendo?"

"Not yet. But I'm gonna put you down for two wreaths here. All you have to do is tell your mom that Tiffany said it was okay."

"But Tiffany won't say it's okay."

"Do you like Tiffany?"

"No. She's mean."

"Exactly, Brett, exactly. She'll get fired. You'll get two wreaths to help me win the Nintendo, and I'll let you be the only kindergartener who gets to come over and play it. Deal?"

"Yeah!"

"Good work. See ya next week."

I got through a few more houses in the next twenty minutes. I made a sale to the Garzas and got a promise from Mr. Thompson if I came back later when his wife got home with the checkbook. I had sold close to a dozen wreaths in one afternoon. I was feeling pretty good about myself. The sensation had even returned to my thumbs.

I rounded the corner on Watson and saw my dad's minivan pull into the driveway. I'd even made it home in time for supper. Take that, Josh Farmer. But as I trudged up the stairs to my front door, I heard a familiar lisp making an exit.

"...and God bless the United States of America. You have yourself a wonderful evening and a Merry Christmas, Mrs. Doyle."

Farmer tiptoed down the stairs and patted me on the shoulder as he went by. He'd just sold two wreaths to my own mother.

"Suck on that one, Jake."