Imagination. It’s Great!
One night when I was somewhere around seventeen, I was visiting my best friend. I was friendly with her mom (who shared my love of Guns’n’Roses, which best friend decidedly did not) so when best friend wanted to go to bed, I hung around in the living room talking to mom for a few minutes before heading home. The big old console TV (remember those?) was showing one of the Critters movies. I was, as I said, around seventeen. But home was a half mile away, and it was a dark (but moonlit!) night. And I lived in the country, did I mention that? It was an empty half mile, with no streetlights, no houses, and probably not a single car passing me. And there were dark patches on the road. Yes, I knew they were spots where the gray asphalt, sparkling a bit with mica chips, had been patched with tar. I’d seen them on the walk to best friend’s house. I’d seen them, walked over them, ridden my bike past them, probably a thousand times. I knew exactly what they were, and I bet I could have mapped them with my eyes closed. That night while I told myself exactly what those dark patches were, I walked wide around them anyway, keeping an eye on them even once I was past, in case one of them tried to come after me. More than being scared, though, I was annoyed. Let’s face it, even in the 80’s, these weren’t…