bongos
...i dont know how i feel about this one-- except that it needs help.
Bongos
Sometimes, when mom was too tired to cook after work, dad ordered pizza. The Sassano’s across the street always had cold pizza in the fridge, but in our green house on Evesborough drive it was very rare. Megan and Adam would fight over the front seat, mostly dad would pick me. This was before laws existed about size requirements and safety seats. Besides I was tall for my age. The green machine, later to be know as the C.M.V. (Child Molester Van) by Adam’s fraternity brothers, took a right on Amelfi Dr, left onto Sterns Rd, and right onto Caughdenoy. Passed the swamp where all the mosquitoes come from. Bongos sat in a lot with a stone driveway between a horse farm and a white apartment building with pealing paint. It was the best pizza in the world.
The red building seemed to be seeping with grease. There was a picnic table out front, but no one actually ate there. Except maybe the kid whose father was a police man, that’s why the patrol car was always in the drive way. Mom told Adam not to play w him, but they’d shoot baskets at Pat Volls house when she was at work. The rocks in the parking lot stuck awkwardly in my light-up shoes as we raced in to pick up the pizza that was cut like professionals cut cake. In front of the counter, eye-level, was the most important part of the trip, the candy. Warheads were the favorite. Megan and Adam always picked them. Adam had MC Hammer pants and Megan wore multi-colored wind suits; they were clearly knowledgeable in the area of cool. Mike Dougherty once choked on ten of them in the cafeteria at school. Ever since they had to be snuck in, it was the only way to beat his record.
* * *
Sometimes Tony and Stephanie would come from Scranton or Groton or somewhere that wasn’t Syracuse. We’d eat pizza cut like cake and wings that don’t exist outside of western New York anymore. These wings must be eaten one way.
1. Dip chicken in copious amounts of blue cheese.
2. Take largest bite possible.
3. Immediately apply ice to burning lips.
4. Repeat.
After Katie and Chris and Adam, Megan, and I would play hide and seek. It was a ritual. One in which I would hide in one of two places every time. Sometimes I miss fighting over the corner pieces of the pizza cut like cake and sucking on ice cubes after eating wings made my lips taste like fire.
* * *
We moved the summer before the fifth grade. Bongos had already become Uncle Chubby’s. They sold freeze pops that were too big, and pizza cut like pie instead of cake. The Sassano’s kept going but it wasn’t the same. Tony and Stephanie went on diets and we make salad and low fat chocolate cake whenever they visit now.
Bongos
Sometimes, when mom was too tired to cook after work, dad ordered pizza. The Sassano’s across the street always had cold pizza in the fridge, but in our green house on Evesborough drive it was very rare. Megan and Adam would fight over the front seat, mostly dad would pick me. This was before laws existed about size requirements and safety seats. Besides I was tall for my age. The green machine, later to be know as the C.M.V. (Child Molester Van) by Adam’s fraternity brothers, took a right on Amelfi Dr, left onto Sterns Rd, and right onto Caughdenoy. Passed the swamp where all the mosquitoes come from. Bongos sat in a lot with a stone driveway between a horse farm and a white apartment building with pealing paint. It was the best pizza in the world.
The red building seemed to be seeping with grease. There was a picnic table out front, but no one actually ate there. Except maybe the kid whose father was a police man, that’s why the patrol car was always in the drive way. Mom told Adam not to play w him, but they’d shoot baskets at Pat Volls house when she was at work. The rocks in the parking lot stuck awkwardly in my light-up shoes as we raced in to pick up the pizza that was cut like professionals cut cake. In front of the counter, eye-level, was the most important part of the trip, the candy. Warheads were the favorite. Megan and Adam always picked them. Adam had MC Hammer pants and Megan wore multi-colored wind suits; they were clearly knowledgeable in the area of cool. Mike Dougherty once choked on ten of them in the cafeteria at school. Ever since they had to be snuck in, it was the only way to beat his record.
* * *
Sometimes Tony and Stephanie would come from Scranton or Groton or somewhere that wasn’t Syracuse. We’d eat pizza cut like cake and wings that don’t exist outside of western New York anymore. These wings must be eaten one way.
1. Dip chicken in copious amounts of blue cheese.
2. Take largest bite possible.
3. Immediately apply ice to burning lips.
4. Repeat.
After Katie and Chris and Adam, Megan, and I would play hide and seek. It was a ritual. One in which I would hide in one of two places every time. Sometimes I miss fighting over the corner pieces of the pizza cut like cake and sucking on ice cubes after eating wings made my lips taste like fire.
* * *
We moved the summer before the fifth grade. Bongos had already become Uncle Chubby’s. They sold freeze pops that were too big, and pizza cut like pie instead of cake. The Sassano’s kept going but it wasn’t the same. Tony and Stephanie went on diets and we make salad and low fat chocolate cake whenever they visit now.