Hawaii Pacific Review

by Andi Boyd

My best friend and I used to tear the legs off grasshoppers. Worse, we also sometimes popped their bright bulbous eyes. That summer one of our parents had gone to Shopko and bought us a bright, neon kiddie pool to share. This was where we held our swimming lessons for the ladybugs not wise enough to hide. We were not very good instructors. Mostly, we drowned them in droves. When we flung our collection of insects from the side of the plywood that nested in the crevice of a dead tree—our tree house—into the pool below, we called it diving school. Though diving was not something either of us was brave enough to do yet. Our swimming days at Crossroads Health Club were spent mostly in the hot tub, where we begged the supervising adult to spin us around like we were cooked vegetables in a hot stew. I was a carrot. My best friend, potato. Continue reading →