Hey… Remember when the whole neighborhood was ours? “Kay… what are you doing?” Hell, I don’t know. I started out riding my bike. Those days. Soda can rattling in my bike tire, Riding around with nowhere to be. Three brothers always made me tougher, If they did it, you know I had to see. Bare feet running across the concrete, Stubbed toes and scraped-up knees. Cried for a minute, then I shook it off, There was too much world left to see. Kool-Aid waiting out on the porch, Fried potatoes, neighborhood kids. Didn’t matter whose house we were at, Back then, we all just fit in. Those days… Were they really that hard? Riding our bikes until it got dark, Catching lightning bugs in the yard. Five more minutes… That’s all we wanted. We thought we had problems, Guess every kid does. We didn’t have much… But hell, we had us. Sleepovers over at my cousin’s house, Staying up way too late. Video games with no memory card, Turn it off… start again the next day. Ding-dong ditch and running like hell, Trying not to laugh before somebody could tell. Nan Nan bear hugs… Gosh, she loved us so much. The kind of love you just knew. Family cookouts, music playing, Everybody running in and out. Somebody hollering, “Shut that door!” While us kids were running around. Those days… Were they really that hard? Summer nights that lasted forever, Music playing somewhere in the yard. Five more minutes… That’s all we wanted. We thought we had forever, Guess every kid does. We didn’t have much… But hell, we had us. Late-night jailbreak, somewhere in the woods. Running and laughing like kids should. A whole group of us growing up together, thinking those nights would last forever. Nobody told us there’d come a day we’d stop knocking on each other’s doors. We didn’t know. We just… went home. Those days… Were they really that hard? Soda cans rattling in our bike tires, Lightning bugs glowing in the yard. Five more minutes… That’s all we wanted. Back then we couldn’t wait to grow up. Funny… we didn’t know. We didn’t have much… But hell, we had us. “See y’all tomorrow…” Funny how one day… we didn’t. Those days.
