This is the story of a kid ...

This is the story of a kid. He was a cool kid and he liked to have fun. He was growing up in the late 70s and listening to KISS, Foreigner, and other similar bands on the radio. He was turned on to “Hot Blooded,” by his neighbor, a high schooler who liked to skateboard. He skateboarded on one of those old fashioned skinny skateboards that modern skateboarders would call worthless. It was a modern antique in 1978. People still rode the nifty 10-speed bikes with the looped handlebars. Girls wore their tight jeans and always had their hands in their back pockets. That was cool back then, you know. Boys, they wore their jeans tight, too, and always had a groovy comb hanging out. Life was good back in 1978.

Trans Ams were the coolest cars around and when the kid’s parents said that Grandma and Grandpa had bought a Trans Van, he was exited and couldn’t wait to see it. Imagine his surprise when it was a camper and not a cool black car with wings on the hood like Burt Reynolds’ in Smokey and the Bandit. That doesn’t really matter at this point, only that the kid thought life was too complicated for two way different vehicles to have such similar names. The kid was cool, though. If it was a nice, hot summer day in the high 80s, he would be outside riding around in his makeshift police uniform on a yellow huffy bike with the handle that could sound like a motorcycle and the really nifty banana seat.

The kid also had a police hat on that was really used in the line of action by a Pontiac police officer. He hadn’t been killed in the line of duty or anything; nope, the hat was just too out-of-date to keep anymore so the cop gave it to the neighbor kid. The neighbor kid was cool, at least that’s what everyone thought. The older kids, the teen-agers, they even thought he was cool. He would ride around and pull the older kids over and write them pretend tickets and ask them to behave and things like that. The older kids never even beat the hell out of the kid because he was so cool. Kids knew better than to ride their 10-speeds too fast through the kid’s speed trap, though. He was a tough cop.