A Bad Idea I'm About to Do by Chris Gethard Read Free Book Online Page A

trouble among any self-respecting group of preteen males.

    â€œProve it.”
    Everyone “oohed” at the prospect of Koozo being challenged. Koozo got angry. He squinted his eyes and puffed out his chest. He told everyone to back up.
    â€œLet’s see . . . let’s see . . . ,” he said quietly, looking for a worthy target. His eyes locked onto my house. “There! Mr. Gethard’s wearing a black shirt.”
    Everyone, myself included, turned to see my father gardening on our front lawn. Apparently, the mental effects of my grandfather’s car crash had finally worn off and my dad was again finding peace in helping some of Mother Nature’s creatures grow.
    â€œNow wait a second,” I said. “Don’t even—”
    I was cut off by the taunts of the kids I was standing among. Koozo threw a pile of fireworks onto the ground, wiped the sweat from his palms by rubbing them across his dingy shorts, and removed a lighter from his pocket. He went down to one knee in front of the fireworks, and took on the serious facial expressions and body language of a World War II infantryman about to fire mortar shells at the enemy.
    â€œKoozo, man,” I said, “it’s my dad.”
    My protests fell on deaf ears. Everyone ignored me as the anticipation of Koozo’s airborne attack on my father grew. I glanced over to Gregg, who shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing we could do to stop it. We could only wait to see how it turned out.
    Koozo lit the first firecracker and pointed it toward my dad. It shrieked through the night, a trail of light marking its path as it headed straight for the old man, only to get caught up in the branches of a small nearby tree. It exploded in a shower of sparks.
    My dad flipped onto his back, his eyes wide in terror. He raised the hand-sized pitchfork he had been working with, waving it defensively at no one. Just then, another firework exploded above his shoulder, causing him to spin wildly, searching the
horizon for his assailant. His eyes spotted Koozo as the maniacal boy/man leaned down to light yet another missile. My dad twisted onto his stomach and crawled down the hill that marked the edge of our property. As quickly as he could, he leapt behind the corner of our house.
    When he stuck his head out moments later, another firecracker careened past him, exploding against the wall of the Scagliozzis’ home next door. My dad used this as his opportunity to flee. He vaulted over the low-lying bush that ran along the walkway to our front door. He leapt up all three stairs and flung open the door, falling forward into our porch just as another firework whipped past him, narrowly missing his feet as he finally escaped into the safety of our home. Moments later, Koozo fired off one last rocket for good measure, though my father was long gone. It exploded in front of our house, and was followed by an eerie silence and the smell of gunpowder.
    â€œSee?” Koozo said with no small amount of glee in his voice. “Black shirt. Chased him that whole time. Nigger chasers.”

    A s years passed, Koozo appeared less and less frequently. My final encounter with him occurred when I was almost done with high school. It had been a good three years since I’d seen hide or hair of him.
    One afternoon, my brother and I were fiddling around with a police scanner (don’t ask why—the answer is that we’re losers and dorks) when we picked up someone broadcasting on a CB, inviting truckers to congregate at Our Lady of Lourdes church. This was our church, only three short blocks from our home. We snuck down to Lourdes to see what was going on. There were
four or five full-blown eighteen-wheelers circled in the parking lot. In the middle of this ring of big rigs, sitting on the hood of his car, was Koozo, grinning and gesticulating wildly as he shouted to the truckers in their cabs. From our distance we couldn’t hear what he was