Speaking of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game...

i moved from a small college town in pennsylvania to london nw4 for a year when i was in the fourth grade. this iranian boy named irfan dinoni lived around the corner. he was one of countless neighborhood kids my brother and i taught how to play four-square and kickball. we used to change the rules in midplay to make sure we always won. eventually the study-abroad program my dad was running came to an end and we moved back to PA. years went by and i stopped thinking about my days as a young cheating bastard in hendon... but soon after i started the eighth grade, i got caught doing something or other and had to go to principal's office to be "corrected". i saw irfan standing there when i walked through the door. his family had moved to america, and of all possible places they chose the same little redneck dipshit college town to live in that my parents' chose when they came to the states. most people were in that town for one of two reasons: the university or the federal prison. irfan's family was there for neither; they owned a string of Perkin's restaurants along route 15. i used to go there for free pancakes and waffles, and to kick irfan's ass on the galaga machine. he hated that town as much as i did but was far better behaved (which basically meant he didn't entertain himself by stealing shit, breaking into shit, or blowing shit up). we talked a lot over asteroids and pancakes, and over time came up with a theory that there was more than just coincidence behind our parents' choice of country and zip code. we figured there was some deep sinister evil lurking in the town that mesmerized the minds of nice iranian and guyanese folks, then drew them into its horrible grasp so it could torture their children. now the big problem with that theory was the fact that ours were the only guyanese and iranian families around. not to be thwarted by logic, we decided that we were just the beginning. soon the tormented offspring of nice guyanese and iranian folks would fill the streets, dazed and abused. we would organize. we would bring them all together to educate them, to let the brothers and sisters know the *truth*. when the time was right, we would all rise up as one righteous force and beat down the wicked. but it wasn't to be. that was the summer i found out how well sex and drugs went with rock, funk and soul. and eventually irfan's parents broke the spell. they got the hell out of dodge and took him with them. so we never did vanquish the lurking evil. and last time i visited my parents, i noticed that there were a hell of a lot more black, middle eastern, and latino folks living in that town... before he left irfan told me that he always knew my brother and i were cheating at kickball, but he never said anything because we seemed to enjoy it so much when we won. what a guy.