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Pa’s next-door neighbor spraying down the lawn with his hose.
    I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Frazzled and exhausted, I walked over to Pa and placed my hand on the old man’s back. He was surely terrified by this whole thing, but I had come to his aid. I realized that my patting his back was the most physical contact, and the most intimate moment, we’d shared in almost a decade. I felt a profound sense of closeness with my grandfather, and I vowed that this strange, awful experience would serve as the impetus for my taking better care of the guy, being there for him more often.
    He looked at me with what I thought was pride in his eyes. I figured he was experiencing the same sentiments. Then he spoke and brought me back down to Earth.
    â€œThis is all your fault!” he shouted, scorn filling his voice.
    â€œWhat? How could this possibly be my fault?” I asked.
    â€œI asked you to mow my lawn,” he shot back. “You didn’t, so I just lit it on fire!”
    For the record, he had never asked me anything of the sort.

    P a died in 2003. His skunk was the only thing I asked to inherit. I still have it.
    The fact is, Pa represents some of the genetic material that contributed to my very existence. It’s a frightening thought, but one that fills me with a great amount of hope as well.

    One day, I’ll be old. Everyone will have died or left me, and I will be alone. Maybe depression will have a hold on me, or my grasp on reality will have slipped. I will sense that my day of reckoning is at hand, and I will undoubtedly be scared.
    When that day comes, I pray that I will find strength. Not the strength to endure, and not the strength to come to grips with the life I’ve led and the mistakes I’ve made. I know myself well enough to know that such strength will be beyond me to summon.
    Instead, I pray for the strength to reach for the stuffed skunk that is my grandfather’s legacy. For the strength to live my final days as he did—distracting myself from my ultimate fate with weirdness and fun.
    I pray for the strength during my final days to strike the match that will set my whole world on fire, as my grandfather did before me.

Koozo
    K oozo.
    In my neighborhood, it was a name that could only be spoken in whispers. 1
    I first met the man known as Koozo when he climbed out of a sewer pipe at the bottom of my street wearing mesh shorts and no underwear. I had been playing kickball with a few other kids when we saw him emerge from the depths to approach us.
    â€œHey, I’m Koozo,” he said, wild-eyed and grinning.
    â€œDo you know we can see your wiener?” my brother asked. No sense in beating around the bush when it comes to something as prominent as an exposed phallus.
    â€œYeah,” Koozo answered, grinning. “Yeah, I do know that.”
    Koozo, or Jack Koozling, grew up around the block from me, on Mississippi Avenue. I spent the better part of my childhood living in the grip of a curious combination of fascination and fear that he inspired.

    For the entire time I knew him, no one was sure how old Koozo was. He was either a very burly teenager or an underdeveloped young man—it was hard to tell. Asking Koozo about his age revealed nothing. Like most conversations with Koozo, it only made clear that his plane of reality was a few steps away from ours.
    â€œKoozo, man,” one might nonchalantly say, “how old are you turning this year?”
    â€œHa,” Koozo would respond. “I’m as old as the hills, man. I’ve always existed. And I always will. ”
    This mystery was further compounded by Koozo’s propensity for showing up to play with us preteen kids driving a car. It meant either that Koozo was at least seventeen—the legal driving age in New Jersey and thus far older than the kids he played with regularly—or that he had stolen a car. Neither option would have surprised anyone who knew him.
    While