Boo(b)!

It's October in the High Country, and that can mean only one thing: it's time to take the boy to the Ghost Train. Then, for about a month after the ride, it will be time to reassure him that werewolves don't really exist as he climbs into my bed at 4 a.m. night after night after night.

I was privy to quite the kid conversation about the Ghost Train today on the playground. Silas was running around all willy nilly, as he's wont to do, when another boy approached me, kickball in hand. Fade to flashback. I was rewriting history in my mind--no longer was I the last kid picked, the sucker who shinned easy pop ups for easy outs on high bouncing pitches I should've let pass, but instead I was booting the orb so far from the dusty home plate that it became a salmon-red pingpong ball disappearing over the distant horizon--when the kickball thumped off my chest, startling me to attention.

Kickball kid just grinned at me. He must have an older brother, or a real hard time dressing himself. The collar of his shirt was so stretched out, I could see most of his chest. After the kickball surprise, I kind of wanted to sling him down by the shirt too. The gaping neckhole revealed a chest adorned with a fading temporary tattoo.

"You get that ink in the joint?" I asked, retrieving the ball.

"Huh?"

I tossed him the ball. He caught it, tossed it back.

"Where did you get that tattoo?"

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"You must have a tattoo gun at home," I said.

This intrigued him.

"Naw. Does you'ins have one?"

(For those of you who ain't from around here, "you'ins" is mountain for "ya'll.")

"No, no tattoo gun, but my son has gotten tattoos at Tweetsie before."

The ball continued its path, back and forth. Most kids flinch when the ball gets near, taking their eyes off of it. This clearly wasn't his first game of catch.

"You catch with your eyes," I said, "not your hands. You've got to see it to catch it."

"I know it," he said, as if this was the most ridiculously simple thing anyone had ever told him.

The ball passed between us a few more times before he broke the silence: "I gone to Tweetsie once when I was a little bitty baby."

A girl kid drove her tricycle between us, slamming on her foot brakes and interrupting our game. She was drawn to the word Tweetsie like a bumblebee to nectar.

"I went to Tweetsie last weekend and rode the Ghost Train!" she buzzed.

"Were you scared?" I asked.

"I wasn't scared til the creatures came on and then I hid in my mommy's boobs!"

"OOOH, GROSS!" said kickball kid. He probably had a very different opinion a few years earlier, and I'm guessing that once he gets his coodies shot his love for mammaries will fester anew.

"They're not gross," girl kid insisted. "My mommy's boobs smell nice!"

I had at least 27 responses flutter through my head; fortunately, all 27 were successfully snared by my filter. Nice smelling boobies. I can't really compete with that, but maybe, as the Ghost Train clatters across the tracks, if I've got on enough deodorant I can cram the boy's head under my hairy pit and look forward to some uninterrupted sleep later that night.