The Warmest Part of Your Body
My best friend growing up was Sean. He was a couple years older but for some reason we clicked and we both liked all the same things. My heart warms at the thought of our friendship and companionship throughout my childhood and into my early teenage years.
Sean had a younger brother, Eddie, who was a year older than me. Sean and Eddie were classic brothers; they fought each other to death and would defend each other to the same. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to or for each other. I chuckle as I think of all the scraps they got into, and how they would get into each other’s heads, and just how, I don’t know, how brotherly they were.
I never had a brother until I was fourteen. Sean and Eddie were my brothers.
When I was nine (just before I was ten, actually) a new kid moved into our neighborhood. His name was Wayne. Wayne was sort of, well, a dorky looking fellow. He had curly hair, big ears and buck teeth that you could fit two quarters between.
He proved it to us once. Seriously.
Anyway, Wayne and I became close, but not as close as Sean and I were, and it usually ended up that Wayne and Eddie were close while Sean and I were, and I think Eddie was only close to Wayne by default. Wayne’s mom also had tons of food in her apartment, and Wayne, because of his insecurity and desire to be cool, would let us in to get whatever we wanted.
I liked Wayne for none of the reasons the other kids did. Wayne and were friends because I befriended him when all the other kids picked on him and left him out of our games, and because his birthday was June 9th and mine June 10th. What better reason to be close friends when you’re nine than that?
One cold snowy winter day Sean, Eddie, Wayne and I decided we wanted to go sledding. We had nothing better to do, and we had spent the afternoon shoveling all the sidewalks of the Senior Center close by. That job always landed us some good money and warm cookies. I was ten years old and I got up every time the snow flew at 6am and went with those guys to shovel walk ways.
Someone mentioned that we should try riding our bikes out to the town sewer plant and try to ride them down the dunes out there. Why not? It was only about a half mile away, which was a lot farther a distance then – not to mention on a peddle bike in the middle of a Northern Michigan winter. We went for it. I remember the ride out there thinking this was a dumb idea. I’m sure everyone else did to, but who wanted to admit it and be the whiner? Wayne might have whined about it. Come to think of it, he did, because his bike, which he thought was the best bike of the hood, had the hardest time getting through the snow.
He ended up walking the majority of the way. I turned around and walked with him. Soon, Sean did the same, and sure enough, Eddie kept peddling the rest of the way. That’s the way it went with us.
Sledding down those huge dunes was exactly the adventure we thought it would be, but as the sun started to make its decent in the Western sky the temperature went down with it. Man, it sure was cold out there. I remember how frozen my hands felt. We all stood there with our bikes, freezing and not wanting to make the trip back.
“My hands are freezing,” one of us admitted.
“Mine, too,” someone added.
I don’t recall who it was, but it wasn’t me who said, “I’m going to stick my hands down my pants to warm them up.” Down his pants? He was going to put his frozen digits on his you know what? “It’s the warmest part on your body,” he said as he took off his gloves and put his hands down his snow pants.
I remember that it didn’t take us more than a second to follow his lead. Soon we were all standing there, breath visible in the cold moon light, sitting on our bikes, entrenched in snow, on the sewer plant dunes, with our hands down our pants looking for warmth and finding what I know now as male bonding.
*all posts are copyrighted and any part must be used by permission of the author, Tobias A. Neal*
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lol funny