Outskirts Press, INC.

Pleasant memories of awkward years gone by

Written in the voice of Garrrett, a sixteen-year-old social misfit. By chance he befriends a family new to town. The family (The Tamworths) have been home schooled, but since they moved to Dover, New Hampshire, the parents decide to enter their children into public school. The Tamworths are also social misfits even though they excel at all they encounter. Garrett begins to abandon his old thoughts on many things. He rethinks his religion and he rethinks his relationship with his family, especially his father. The boys grow closer together and they share the same feats and foes. Garrett and his friend Carlton get caught up in the rising popularity of the Tamworths. Carlton's parents are divorcing and this added crisis puts a lot of tension on the friendship between Garrett and Carlton. Garrett experiences the death of a close friend. Love, laughs, fights and freedom are woven together to bring a refreshing look at a fond era.

Falls crisp mornings and early evenings were giving way to winters bitter blacket of snow and ice. I dreaded the winter and the unmistakeable feeling that the blistful energetic atmosphere that was associated with the fun loving summers would somehow never return. I loved the beaches and the lakes, and I even liked hanging around the city pool. The mountains with their abundant wildlife would put all its campers on hold until Memorial day. The only fond playful memories that I could relate to winter were the earlier years when my dad would bring Carlton and I up to Birch hill. We would ride the sleds to the bottom, with the hopes that someone would haul the sleds back to the top for a return run. Dad would come through time, and time again. Yet as I aged and was capable of hauling my own sled to the top. My interest had changed. Now I had no use for this miserable time of the year. The only thing that winter had to offer was that it held Christmas in it's clasp, and it gave the snow and ice a decorative value. As for New Years day. I thought it should be moved to the first day of spring, sometime in April. That way it would truly represent a fresh new year, filled with new life, and blossoms, and new animal births, and longer days with their expanding sunshine. New aromas set free from the boastful plants that chose to release them, rewarding all the insects that made it through the solitude of winter, and its encapsulating grip on the surface of the earth. All who were hidden, could now show thier faces, and reconcile with a new beginning. All the leaves on every tree would falsely reappear. They would look identical to their predecessors, but not a one leapt from the ground to the waiting branches.