An ill-timed

your mom

tag line to Mike’s comedy routine, after which he followed up with the clearly escalating “what you say about my moms?”

lights dim, cue the byrds, pull focus across the table passing dina on the left and dorky kid to our right, voice over;

narrator: I didn’t realize it at the time, but a little piece of my childhood had slipped away, forever
(beat)

It was one of the many red lines our mouth would help us discover. Him spotting us after school, his first volley of “that’s your ass!” before we countered with the at-the-time all too clever,

“you’ll have to catch me first!”

and we were off and running like a little brown TIE fighter.

they were black and mike was big as the death star

He throws us up against a car port and we have one last move to play;

“Why were we fighting again?”

And then he pauses, his crew in the background instigating. Get him. Beat his ass.