The stuff that legends are made of

A few blocks from the hospital where I was born, a few blocks, but the other way from the house where we lived when I was born, two blocks from where we lived when Son was born, and just around the corner from where my parents’ friends, and my sometime babysitters lived, there used to be a movie theater.

For decades now, in its place, there’s been a Pentecostal Church.

New flavor?

But before that, when they still showed movies there, we – Mom, Dad, and I – once went there to see a Tarzan movie.

It might have been a Johnny Weissmuller one, or maybe it was a Lex Barker film, but it was surely in black and white, and, without a doubt, it must have been exciting.

Whoever the star of the movie was, that time, he wasn’t the star of the show, because in front of us, a teenage boy sat and enjoyed the movie, taking it all in.

And some of it out, and then putting it back in.

What he did was this: He dug up a nice booger out of his nose, rolled it into a ball, held it between his thumb and index finger, made a last quality control by holding it up against the light coming from the big screen, and then popped it in his mouth.

Not once, not twice, but several times, like it was candy.

My parents were shocked. Times were tough, but not that tough. Maybe that’s why they always made sure I had money to get a pack of Chewits at the movies.

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