The funny thing is, I used to be ready to try anything. I had no fear. Maybe I should have, though.
Like I said, I used to live in a small town called Cornwall in upstate New York. Well, that’s what people who live there call it. And the people who make maps.
Stevie Kosgrov? He calls it “Cornball.” Making me the “crip from Cornball.”
Seems before I moved to Smileyville, Stevie had his eye on the garage.
“I wanted that to be my bedroom,” he says. “It’d be so easy to sneak out at night to TP yards, egg cars, and punch people.” Yes, Stevie has an active social life.
He also shadows me wherever I go. School. The bathroom. The movies.
“And don’t think I won’t punch you!” he’s always saying.
“You already did punch me!” I want to remind him, but I never do, because it might make him mad enough to punch me again.
“I’ll punch anybody and anything!” he boasts. “Girls, old people, fire hydrants, even goldfish.”
Yes, Stevie Kosgrov claims he actually punched out a goldfish once.
When he was a baby. With teeny-tiny fists.
“I didn’t like the way the thing was looking at me with that sideways eyeball. So I smacked it right in the kisser.”
And unlike the miniature snack crackers, this goldfish did not smile back.