My first meeting with Andy was explosive. Literally. I answered a knock to my door and faced the barrel of a gun. Before I could blink I heard a ‘Snap!’ and my world exploded.
The pint-sized brat had shot me in the face with some sort of play pellet gun.
He could have shot out my eye, but as he was fond of saying, ‘So what, I didn’t’.
As my next-door neighbor, I could not escape Andy. My Father the Maniac LOVED the boy, much to my dismay, and the two were always crowding my space.
In the hood (if you can call a middle-class subdivision a hood), Andy made torturing me his prime focus. He broke my sidewalk chalk. He loosened the stoppers on my rollerskates. He displayed my dolls in compromising positions. He lit my cat on fire. He threw darts at my feet. He stuck gum in my hair. He’d harass my sleep-over friends by running naked through my playhouse.
His parents would hire me to babysit his little sister and he would do things to sabotage my pristine record. Once, he lit the backyard on fire (come to think of it, the kid had a few pyro tendencies). He also did things to scare his sister so bad she would call her parents. I have to admit, he was extremely creative and things usually ended with me giving the $20 back to his parents.
At school, things were a different story. He was downright evil. On the bus, he once staged a coop. He convinced the other kids to push me out of whatever seat I tried to occupy. I’ll NEVER forget that day. Various kids would brace their arms against the side of the bus and use their feet to push me out of the seat. GOD how I hated Andy!
Andy wasn’t completely useless. He did teach me the fine art of removing legs from big juicy cicadas during the horrendous locus season we had one summer. And when our neighborhood Math tutor put his hand on my leg, Andy beamed him in the head with his soda can.
Oh, and one time, ONE time, I was clever enough to seek revenge. There was a new subdivision being built behind our houses and one of them had fresh, new, WET concrete. I told Andy I was going to write my name in the walk. We fought, scratched, and raced our way to the spot. He won. Sure, the name thing. But he also won a week long trip to ‘bad-kids camp’. Ha!
The rein of Andy the Terror lasted from 1st grade to 9th, when I finally moved away from his Kingdom of Willow Hill Ct.
Good thing too. We probably would have ended up married with at least one of us in jail for murdering the other.
Oh, and Andy Bogenshultz, *I’m* not scared. If you’re out there and ever find this, look me up. I’m a black belt thanks to you ,-)
