On a Summer Night

I've been thinking about some of my teenage experiences, especially one warm night when my good friend and I were sleeping under the stars in my back yard. I know we weren't sixteen yet because neither of us had our license to drive. We'd lived in the same neighborhood for years, but we'd really only gotten to know each other in the last year. Like me, his dad wasn't around. My mom was on her second marriage and his mom was divorced. 

So our moms weren't with our dads and we lived the same street and went to the same ward and the same school, but other than that we didn't have too much in common. I wore glasses over my brown eyes. His blue/hazel eyes needed no correction. I was good at non-technical stuff like English and history. He slaughtered the English language but was great with math. He was into sports. I wasn't. Yet somehow we had become friends. 

Actually I shouldn't say somehow. I know exactly how it happened. We were walking home from school one day and when we got to his house, he tackled me on his lawn. No warning. He didn't challenge me to a fight. We weren't talking about anything in particular, but suddenly he was on top of me and I was fighting to get free. Eventually the fight stopped. I picked up my books and walked home. After that we were pretty good friends.

Well back to that summer night on the back lawn. We'd had a long talk about religion--I wasn't active in the church and he was--and then things grew quiet and I started to fall asleep. Then my friend did something that I will always remember. To be continued.