My mom sent us to the park a couple of miles away.
I met up friends on the way and we formed the Gang of the Wild Animals. My name was Black Panther/Tortuous Anaconda.
My brother was Warmongering Bull.
We'd decorate our weapons with make-up we found in the park and draw maps. Mayan-style drawings were popular because of a book my dad gave me.

We spied.

One guy we kept seeing was pretty fucking weird, even for our over-active imaginations. He followed us, so we started following him. We got the guts to ask him what time it was.

Then we followed him for another stretch.

Then my friend spotted him taking a dump in the bushes.

After he left, we found stacks of wet porno comics and diapers where he relieved himself. We figured he had peed on the comics, but it could have been the rain.

A few years later, I spotted the same guy jerking off in a packed trolley during the AM rush hour. Hand in his pants, panting, legs rigid and extended out. In seventh grade, he followed us when we went to the movies after school. I believe my mom had a run-in with him, and I saw him on a couple of other occasions.

My best friend from the Wild Animals soon left the gang to join the Brown Falcons, an all-Albanian gang dedicated to

1. Liberating Kosovo
   (By force, with Kalashnikovs, and protected with transformers-like body armor the main kid was designing. He was gonna use armored safes as raw material).
2. Searching for the regurgitated balls of hair and bones that owls leave around.
   (The Brown Falcons founder was really into birds and raised pigeons or chickens. As a fifth grader he'd been on TV several times, interviewed during various free Kosovo protests).

I was allowed to join even though I was not Albanian and had a Serbian grandfather on my mother's side. I joined.

We had a symbol for that pervy guy on our maps; basically, a line drawing of the unabomer, but without the hoodie and the mustache.

- Peter Moran