WORKS ON DIGITAL PAPER

No Touchie, Soho

When I switched from Public to Catholic for my freshman year of high school, I entered a whole new world of peers, 95% of whom I did not know. The five percent I did know thought I was a dork. And so I fell in with Frank Lin, the recent transplant from Hawaii and Aaron Karotko the recent transplant from Maryland. Sometime that year, Aaron and I hosted an under-age, parent chaperoned "hang out" night at my house. Aaron slept over the night before and we got the place ready, commandeering my father's office, my brother's old room and the big plaid-carpeted family room for the festivities. We stayed up late. Real late. So late our fourteen or fifteen year oldness kicked in and we went a little overboard. I had some blank yellow caution tape lying around and we started making inane signs and room names all over the place, cracking oursleves up. The best one, and this one still gets me, was "No Hankie Pankie in the Scratchie Backie Roomie." We giggled about it for hours. No one else thought it was funny.