Zap

I had the best childhood friend a kid could have. His name was Zapthrus Zenith and he could turn a joke quicker than a politician can lie. He was drawing his own comics by the fourth grade. Zap had been born in Olympus but I didn't know him there. Oddly enough, we both ended up here. After the famunit moved from the green box, Zap only lived down the street and around the corner. We went from first grade to seniors together. He was one of the most insecure people I've ever known. He was probably the smartest. His dad never played sports with him. My dad was always playing sports with me. Zap and I loved american football more than anything on earth. We played football for hours, one on one, kiddo e kiddo. We played until exhaustion and neither asked nor gave quarter. When we were juniors in high school, we won a state championship in football. Zap was kinda skinny in high school but he had a monopoly on guts.
If we weren't playing sports, we were collecting baseball and football cards. We'd have 'em all lined up by teams in our rooms. They were sacred. We never had to say things like be careful or don't bend it. We stood in awe and respect at the luck and finesse of how each other could accumulate such prodigious collections of beautifully colored, thin cardboard. Zap gained an unfair advantage in the fifth grade. His dad opened a pharmacy and sold baseball cards. I never bought any cards there. Zap had already been through them and picked the ones he needed. You couldn't tell by looking at the pack. Like I said, Zap was smart. Zap was smart and skinny. I was lucky. Zap would stare in disbelief at certain cards that I had acquired and were, as yet, unattained by him. I was always taught and always believed that in life, a superior foe could be out hustled. You can't win every game, but quitters never win. I spent unseen hours sweeping my granddad's station floor and moving cases of oil for enough change to buy one more pack.
Behind our neighbors' house was the Bamboo Forest. Here the Universe was saved. Zap and I didn't seek gratitude; it was all in a day's work, ma'am. Evil hated us and our frequent visits to the Bamboo Forest. Evil hated to see us even coming in its direction. Evil did put up a good fight. Sometimes it took every ounce of energy in our evil-proof bodies to buy one more day of existence for the human race. You could kill a lot of evil with the right bamboo sword and a fierce warrior by your side. It's interesting that now kids sit in front of television consoles pushing buttons with prefabricated imagination before them. Maybe that's why evil is so prevalent today. It's probably because derelicts like us sit on our butts without doing anything about it.
Derelict or not, Zap was a great friend and we had a heck of a lot of fun growing up. (Not that we ever really grew up.)

I been trying hard to do what's right
but you know
I could stay here all night
and watch the clouds fall from the sky
because this river is wild The Killers