Freshness

When I was 13 in Corvallis, Oregon, I watched the Plan B skateboard video with cousin Joe, a novice skater like myself. We were in his living room, and Jeremy Wray was the skater on the TV. Wray ollied and kickflipped to the soundtrack of Otis Redding's (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay. It was deep summer; each day was condensed like a ZIP file; we had nothing to do, except pilfer Mango Madness Snapples from the garage fridge and watch skateboard videos. Parents were gone.

We sat and watched, awkwardly tried on words like dope and phat to describe what we were seeing, and when the video finished, we went out to cousin Joe's driveway and tried to replicate what Jeremy Wray had done. We got nowhere close, and we didn't care. Every intonation of Otis Redding's voice in our memory's ear, every sweaty sip of Snapple, every cousin-to-cousin accolade, every slap of the wheels on the concrete, all of it was illuminated with the holy neon glow of freshness only the innocent perceive.