The old lion stood guard protecting my rocket ship from intruders as we both watched the final moments of the colorful sunset. The soft glow from the street lights would soon become more noticeable and that would then be followed by porch lights flickering letting every kid in the park know that it was time to head home. My mom wasn’t as strict as the other moms so I usually stayed out later and usually had the entire park to myself. Our front window faced the old 20 foot rocket ship slide and as long as she could see me I was allowed to be outside. The routine was a little different today though. Groups of kids were racing home as if something had just happened. A couple of my neighbors looked up into the rocket and told me to come down. I decided to slide down head first and on my back. I should have thought it out more because I ended up landing so hard that I knocked the wind out of myself. One of the kids shook his head and said “Man, why do you always have to be so weird”
Just a heads up, I am the weird kid in my neighborhood. I’m not the bug eating kid or the always in the nurses office kid though. I am the always in the library kid. The doesn’t have a t.v. at home kid. I am the first one to be called on in class and the last one to be chosen on the playground. I was in the 6th grade and instead of signing up for a sport I decided to sign up for band. When my mom saw what the rental price would be for an instrument she told me I couldn’t do it. So this, along with many other things put me in the weirdo group. And now I was on the ground struggling to breathe as these guys were standing around me wondering why they even bother talking to me.
I shook the sand off my clothes and out of my hair as I stood up. “Look man, just so you know this park is haunted” I laughed because we had all grown up in that park and I had never heard about this before. “I am not joking, people have seen a ghost walking around at night and sometimes it goes into the rocket ship” Well, that explains why I was the only one in the rocket but I still couldn’t believe them. They ran home and told me to do the same.
I usually climbed onto the statue of the old lion and watched the evening mist roll in. Sometimes it was so thick that I couldn’t see our apartment building. I read somewhere that this fog is often called the phantom sea. Knowing stuff like this helped put me into the weird kid category. As I climbed onto the lions back I noticed a beer can in his mouth. “No wonder the intruders got by you, you are drunk”! I took the can out of its mouth and walked over to the restrooms to throw it in the trash. I startled a group of older guys standing next to the trash cans. “Damn kid, whats wrong with you!” you scared us to half to death man. “Check out little man drinking a beer” A roar of laughter echoed through the park. I’m not drinking this, someone left it in the lions mouth. I should have just laughed and left but I had to open my mouth. They began to surround me “Aren’t you afraid of the ghost getting you”? At this moment I realized that I was now surrounded by the scariest thing in the park. They were the local gang and they hung out on the benches next to the basketball courts watching everyone that entered the park. One of them looked me square in the eyes and said, “We saw the ghost a couple of days ago” they pointed to the rocket ship and said it was standing in the top portion looking down at them. I nodded my head and tried to walk away but one of them grabbed me by the shoulder. “You better watch out, the cucuy comes after bad kids that drink beer at parks” Another roar of laughter and then they ordered me to go away. I hurried home just as it started to get dark and the glow of the street lights illuminated the mist rolling into the park.
My mom was getting dinner ready when I walked into our apartment. She gave me a hug and then froze. You smell like beer and cigarette smoke! I told her that I had been talking to the older guys in the park about a ghost that lived in my rocket ship. She gave me a hard look and told me to stay away from those guys. She said the neighbors had been talking about a ghost and that all the kids were scared to death of it. This was all news to me. I was always out of the loop on things around the neighborhood.
Another heads up about me, I spend every other weekend with my dads side of the family. Oddly enough, this didn’t put me in the weird kid category, it actually connected me to a few of the kids in my apartment building. They also knew what it was like to bounce around from house to house. They still gave me a hard time about being weird though.
I stayed up that night watching my rocket ship. I still couldn’t believe that there was a ghost in the park, but I wanted to see what the older guys had seen. I was starting to fall asleep when I heard some of the guys from the park whistling to each other and shouting about the ghost being there. I stared into the foggy night and saw something moving around. It was headed towards my rocket ship but it didn’t look like a ghost. When it got to the rocket two arms came out from under a blanket and then it climbed up into the nose cone. The older guys were there in a hurry but it looked like nobody wanted to be the first to climb up there. I slipped out of my apartment and ran across the street into the park. Again, startling the older guys. “Damn kid, if you do that one more time I’m going to mess you up” the rest of the group laughed when they recognized me from earlier. “Check it out, it’s Mr Wino, sorry man, we are all out of beer” I asked them what was happening and they all pointed up to the rocket ship. Space ghost has arrived.
“Hey Wino, why don’t you go up there and see who that is” I nodded and began climbing the ladder that led to the top level of the rocket. I poked my head into the top level and saw a kid wrapped in a blanket fast asleep. I climbed back down and told the guys that it as a kid. They didn’t believe me so they took turns climbing up there. “Yeah, he lives a couple of streets over”.
‘We know who he is”. They told me that they would stand guard there overnight and then they ordered me to go home. I watched them through my window. A couple of them threw their jackets over the sleeping kid and sat on the benches around the rocket helping the lion keep guard throughout the night.
I woke up in the morning and ran back outside. The kid was still up there and the older guys were still on the benches. They all greeted me with a “Good morning little wino, say hello to little space ghost” I looked up into the rocket and saw a kid sitting at the top of the slide wrapped in a blanket. He didn’t look to happy to have company this early in the morning. One of the older guys told him to send all of their jackets down the slide because they were freezing. He did as they asked and then came down not knowing what to say. One of the older guys asked him if he was ok and the kid nodded yes. They then jokingly introduced us to each other. “Mr. Space Ghost meet Mr. Wino, Mr. Wino meet Mr. Space Ghost” I stopped them and told them that my name is not, nor will it ever be Mr. Wino. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. “My name is Gustavo” We shook hands and the kid said “Gusano, like a worm”? The older guys laughed and I knew right then and there that I had just earned my neighborhood nickname. “No, Gustavo, not gusano” and without missing a beat the kid said, “Ok, worm” I could feel my ears burning so I shot back “how would you like it if I called you space ghost” He said since we were friends, I could call him ghost. The older guys were still laughing from the earlier jokes and now they were almost in tears. “You little homies are too much, whenever you see us in the park come over and say whats up” At this moment I realized that I had to get ready for school. Everyone made a face when I mentioned school and that’s when it happened. Mr. Space Ghost looked up at me and said “You want to go to school, I didn’t know you were a bookworm” All of them were on the ground laughing at me. Even Mr. Space Ghost. I stomped back home angry at the entire situation.
A few days later I was back in my Rocket Ship, but this time everyone was crammed into the top level telling stories about a kid that was living in the rocket at night. There were different stories going around about who he was and where he lived. By the time the sun was setting and the street lights were coming on, the word around the park was that a couple of orphan kids were living there at night. One of them had gotten kicked out of his house for being a little wino kid, I think they called him worm, and the other kid was forgotten by his family so they called him ghost. I was impressed by the stories these kids were making up about me and mr. ghost. I couldn’t wait to go home and write some of them down, but first I had to visit the old lion and catch another sunset with him. As I climbed onto its back someone shouted out, “You going to Narnia bookworm”? I looked over to the benches by the basketball courts and there was a kid standing on a bench pointing and laughing at me. I walked over there and shook his hand. All the older guys jokingly held up beers and asked if I wanted one. I shook my head no and asked them if they had heard all the crazy stories about us. “Heard em’, little homie, we are the ones making them up”! We all laughed and I told them to make me a legend in that park with their next story. I walked over to ghost and asked him what his real name was. He didn’t want to say and this got everyone’s attention. They all started to guess, “Is it Maria, because I have an uncle named Maria and its cool man” Ghost shook his head no, and everyone took turns trying to figure it out. He finally smiled and said, “Casper”. Everyone replied at the same time, “Noooooooooo wayyyyy”! I smiled and pointed out how ironic that was, and of course everyone made fun of me for knowing how to use the word ironic. I shook my head and waved goodbye but they weren’t going to let me leave that easy. Everyone on the benches came up to me and shook my hand. Not just any handshake, the official welcome to the neighborhood handshake. It took me a few tries but I got it down. As I walked home I knew this was the beginning of some really good ghost stories.