Two years ago, during the summer, I was extremely bored. Like really, really bored. It must have been in the middle of July, and this one night, I was really, really bored. I went outside, went down the hill, and saw one of my friends by the ocean, Johnny. Johnny was a cool kid, a year older than me, and with arms of steel. He was lean and tall, and he was really, really bored. We threw around a ball on the grass for a little while, but it was really boring so we stopped. We stopped and we sat on the sidewalk, looking out onto the empty, streetlamp lit street, silent and sullen. It was a cool, muggy night, with stars in the sky, and fireflies in the air. We sat there, for a long time, just staring at the street.
“Hey, look at this.”
Johnny turned around. There were two, long metal poles, not hollow, but rectangular shaped, with curves at the end. Johnny picked one up, grabbed the curved end, and dragged it out on the street. As he dragged it across the black asphalt, the metal had caused great, fiery orange sparks to fly.
“Cool!”
I grabbed the other metal pole and dragged it on the asphalt. The sound of the metal rubbing against the asphalt had a twinkley and grating sound. It was sort of fun, and I smiled at the jumping orange sparks, beautiful and bright. I looked at Johnny. He had decided to experiment or something, and he swung around quickly while holding the metal pole, resulting in a two second ring of flying sparks. He started laughing and I started laughing, and we both spun around with the long metal poles, surrounded by orange sparks and that curious twinkley sound. We went faster and faster, and I saw whizzes and flashes of yellow orange lamplight, white stars on a black sky, grey sidewalk, the luminous purple black ocean, a silver metal pole, and all in a circle of fiery flying sparks. My arms started to get tired, and I let go, sending the metal pole clanging across the asphalt, while I dizzily tried to focus my eyes. In my daze I saw Johnny, still spinning furiously, surrounded by a halo of sparks and a silver flickering thing I knew to be the metal, glowing in the orange lamplight with the fireflies drifitng above him. And he kept spinning and spinning in a blur of dancing lights, his white shirt the brightest thing around, brighter than the stars above his head, spinning and spinning in orange lights. My eyes were already focused, but I was still watching him spin, listening to that metal sound, in that perfect, magical, summer moment.
And then I got up and started spinning again.