Then there was the one brief time when we didn’t live in the Random Woods anymore but had moved two hours away to the south side of a different city at the confluence of two rivers that snaked through the mountains.
This new town was far enough away that I could look back over my shoulder and see myself riding my bike up and down the hills of the neighborhood our big brick house had called home. It was nothing to sit there in my new, strange room and watch the creek fall melodically over the rocks, splashing into the pool below with a percussive patter, to hear the wind, bellowing past my ear, sing effortlessly over the creek’s improvised rhythm. I could smell the grass, feel the warmth of the sun, and wince at the glimmer in the distance where the light was catching the corner of an old can of Natural Light. I could sit there and watch. And I could feel tears welling up in the corners of my eyes.
It was cinematic, really, the way I could sit and watch the life I lived in the land before time, feel it build up around me, pixel by pixel, or brick by brick until I was fully immersed.
At the Two Rivers, through no fault of the land itself, things operated on a schedule. A steady stream of homework, deadlines, and end-of-grade tests added a constant ticking and tocking to the background of day-to-day life. There were obligations. Consequences. Things had changed. Growing up was no longer about getting bigger. In the land of time, things were about getting older.
However, traversing the two hours of gas stations and interstate between these versions of me and me wasn’t something I always had to imagine. Every other weekend I'd get to watch out of the passenger window as the steep faces of the mountains eroded into the rolling hills of the Random Woods. And every other weekend, I'd get to pretend the land of time didn’t exist, that its rules and expectations and consequences no longer applied, that I was a kid again, gleefully roaming around the land before time, as it rebuilt itself around me.
At the time my mom had full custody of us, which was definitely for the best, but my dad had visitation rights and since he’d run to the other side of the country, still found his problems waiting for him, and pridefully trekked back to the Random Woods it was now our legal imperative to shuttle my ass back and forth so the government could think I had a functional family. I didn’t much mind. I liked riding in the car, listening to music, eating sour candy and McChickens, and watching the billboards fly by as I counted exit signs and mile markers.
Plus, I liked being back in the Random Woods. My friends were there. My cousins were there. Without a worry in the world for any responsibilities or consequences, I could wake up at any time of the day, hop on my bike, and take the crisp $20 bill in my pocket to the convenience store where my grandpa worked to buy a Gatorade and a Snickers. There was no ticking, no tocking, no alarm clocks, no deadlines.
Whenever I was in town, my cousin Bone would come and spend the weekend with us. We were the same age, Bone and me, and we’d been practically inseparable since the crib. We’d spent day after day with each other, playing PlayStation, riding our bikes, tossing a football. Despite our similarities, Bone was naturally more adventurous than I was. While the familiar streets close to home, the big hills I knew exactly how to ride my bike down, were often enough for me, Bone liked to venture beyond the traffic-filled main roads that formed the border of our neighborhood. And though I’d always get a little nervous about it, I’d ride right behind him as we journeyed to the distant shops and stores and even the mall.
Our destinations were only limited by two things: our imaginations and the sunset. I didn’t much care to be out after dark and on top of that not much else motivated me in life quite like dinner did. But so long as the sun was up, air was in the tires, and we had money to blow, we’d ride around looking for food, new toys, and cool gadgets to trick out our bikes with.
We’d come up in the age of the good The Fast and the Furious movies and Need for Speed’s peak street racing era. The number of cars we’ve virtually sat on rims too big to be remotely drivable, slapped decals and astronomically large spoilers on, and souped up with enough nitrous to get to the moon and back is uncountable. And we treated our real-life bikes the same way. I’d traded out the caps on my innertube valves for lucky dice, carefully installed an actual speedometer, and had pegs sticking out of both the front and back wheels.
And the best part was I did all that and still kept the $20 bill in my pocket.
See what we’d recently learned about was something Bone liked to call the five-finger discount. It wasn’t a particularly complex concept: you see something you want, you slide it into your pocket.
Of course, there was skill to it. It required finesse, a combination of speed and grace, that made your movements look natural. It required timing and awareness of your surroundings – where the other folks were in the store, where the cameras were. It required creativity, especially in the moment. Not everything could be slipped into a pocket. Some items needed to be unpackaged, some could be slid up a sleeve, sometimes you needed to crack open a drawstring bag and toss something in. All these calculations had to happen in a matter of heart-fluttering moments.
It wasn’t particularly complex, but we were damn good at it, and it sure was exhilarating.
Because perhaps more than anything it required a bit of that sense of adventure. See if it weren’t for some of the rebelliousness that comes with adolescence, the willingness to step outside of one’s hesitations around legality, and if it weren’t for the air of inconsequentiality, of invincibility that accompanies life in the land before time, serial shoplifting would be rather difficult. There’s no time for hesitation. There’s no time for reservation. There’s no time to weigh the consequences.
So it’s a good thing there are none in the land before time.
We used to make out like bandits. A trip to the mall would yield enough toys and knick-knacks to launch our own Spencer’s or Hot Topic. I’d keep a running total of the money I’d saved on each run. $20 here, $5 or $10 there, up and up into the hundreds. The bigger the ticket on the item the more of a challenge it was and the bigger the rush you’d feel after. So we’d ride and ride, hitting as many stores as we could along the way, and only stopping to pay for anything when we were thirsty or wanted a snack.
We’d rode our way to the local superstore, on this particular summer afternoon, in search of some more cheap loot to plunder. I locked up my bike, wrapping the chain around the railing outside where the buggies go. I already knew exactly what I was here for, already envisioned how to unpack it, where to stow it, and how to get on out of there.
“I need to go to the bikes and shit,” I said.
“What’re you tryna get?”
“I want some gloves. Like the fingerless ones.” I needed to complete my biker aesthetic.
He locked up his bike beside mine and we began meandering through the aisles. Bone had wanted to grab himself a new pair of headphones, so we made sure to surreptitiously slide past the Skullcandy’s before we stopped in front of the racks of bikes and took in a big whiff of the smell of the rubber and cardboard.
I perused the gloves and settled on a black, fingerless pair, much like the ones I envisioned. I snapped the tag, stuck them under the flap of the oversized cargo pocket on my shorts, and clasped the button closed. A smile slid across my face, embellished with the perfect little twinkle right on the corner. How lovely it was here in the land before time, where things didn’t have to matter, where we acted with abandon, and lived without age.
We wandered through a few more aisles, Bone looking for just one more thing before he was ready to leave. I was satisfied. I already calculated the time and the paces it would take to get through the sliding doors, unlock my bike, and peel away like the bank robbers I’d seen riding off on horses in the old Westerns.
I turned the corner of the aisle and just about faceplanted the bulky midsection of an overly-muscled gentleman dressed in a black polo, the wire of an earpiece draped over his ear.
“How’re you boys doin’ today?” he offered in a tone suggesting his obligation to pleasantry.
“Fine,” I replied.
“Let me have the gloves.”
“I don’t have any gloves,” the words wavering back and forth.
“You can either give me the gloves or I can call the police. It’s up to you.”
Back outside, I reached for the bike lock, rolled in my combination, and with empty pockets, pedaled away from the store, back toward the neighborhood. I rode and rode as the road gave way beneath me. I rode as hard as I could towards the creek, and the rocks, but couldn’t seem to outpace the darkness, could no longer feel the warmth of the sun. More and more the sky fell away, the hills fell away, pixel by pixel, brick by brick, until there was nothing but black, nothing but the ticking and the tocking.
The ticking. And the tocking.
an excerpt for you
Every artists gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”
The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”
How does an artist look at the world?
First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.
That’s about all there is to it.
Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist.
a journal prompt for you
When does childhood end? Does it end?
If you do write something and you would like to share it, I’d love to read it. You can send it to theguidelines@substack.com or leave a comment.
korick is…
korick is reading Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
korick is watching Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever. Chappell is one of my favorite writers and I’m doing the work of tracing my creative genealogy and climbing my family tree that Kleon talks about in Steal Like an Artist. I found this documentary about Chappell and loved learning about his life and his inspirations.
korick is listening to The Warm Up by J. Cole. Again, I’m climbing up my family tree.
korick is paying attention to saving money. I don’t like being broke.
What are you consuming or paying attention to? I’m always taking recommendations.
Hello from the bottom of the newsletter! It’s lovely to be back here sharing another story this week. I’m grateful for your reading and your being here. Somewhat of a stylistic divergence from the norm. But we’re flexing our muscles and diversifying our skills here.
Growth. Consistency. Becoming.
I don’t know. Something like that. I’m just some dude who’s just trying to figure shit out.
Have a wonderful weekend!
You go to jail, bad boy