The Naked Scavenger Hunt

I had sick friends. There's just no way around it. Sometimes I think maybe I'm being too hard on them and that we were all a little bizarre when we were younger. But then I remember stories like the one I'm about to tell you and I say to myself, "Nope. Guilty as charged."
 
It was near the end of our 7th grade school year and it was supposed to be a typical sleepover. I thought we’d set up camp in someone’s basement, maybe steal a few beers from the garage, and stay up all night talking about the girls we had a crush on, who was better at Street Fighter II, and why Batman Forever was going to be the worst movie of the summer.
 
But this one was different.

With friends like these...

 Patrick was easily two heads taller than the other second graders in my elementary school. Evidently he was growing faster than his mother could keep up with because his jeans were never quite long enough and you could always see his socks. Similarly, his shirts never hung past his belt. A little bit of belly was always exposed. Years later this particular fashion trend would come to be known as a mid-driff and it was a sad day when the principal banned them from my high school. But on Patrick this was not sexy. He looked like Bruce Banner had gotten stuck halfway through his transformation into the Hulk.

License to Lie

I was very lucky with my first car. It was a 1990 Ford Probe GT. All white with silver rims, pop-up headlights, and a spoiler. I loved that damn car. Even if my friends insisted that its name was a clue to the fact that it had been designed to look like a penis, I didn’t care. I saw nothing wiener-esque about it. My enthusiasm was matched by my mother’s tender trepidation. She said a prayer every time I peeled off in it. In fact, I loved that car so much that I couldn’t wait till I got my license to drive it.