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Koozo preferred to keep many things about himself ambiguous, one thing he made absolutely clear was his fondness for another set of wheels more prized than even the car he “owned”: his infamous moped. It’s been twenty years since I first met Koozo. I’ve moved on, physically and emotionally, from that place and time. I haven’t lived in the old neighborhood for over a decade. But I guarantee that if I ran into anyone originally from that part of town and brought up Koozo, they could instantly impersonate the sound of his moped. That unmistakable sound, like a lawnmower on steroids, was burned into the brains of anyone who grew up in my pocket of West Orange, New Jersey, during the ’80s. The first time I saw the moped was one morning when I looked out my window to see Koozo doing donuts on our front lawn.
    A moped is a motorized bike that can be run either by engine or by pedaling, making it the ideal mode of transportation for lunatics.
Pedaling allowed Koozo to silently sneak up on unsuspecting prey. My street was a dead end on a hill. Like all successful predators, Koozo recognized an ideal hunting ground when he saw one. There were countless times when my group of friends would be playing some innocent game in the street as night fell. When darkness settled in around us, the peace of our suburban existence would be thrown into chaos when a lone headlight blinked on at the top of the hill. This would be followed by the unmistakable sound of Koozo’s moped roaring to life. Invariably, it would take Koozo a few attempts to get the motor running—it was in these few precious seconds that we learned to act, to run, to hide. It was through the terror of these repeated experiences that I first became familiar with the “fight or flight” mentality. Anyone who played on my street understood that concept from a young age. And each and every one of us chose flight, categorically.
    â€œKoozo!” we’d all shout while fleeing for our lives. Shouting the word “Koozo” was the most any of us ever did to look out for our friends. “Koozo” was like our shalom or aloha —it had many meanings. The word referred to a man and simultaneously to a mythology surrounding him; it was also synonymous with the word “run.”
    Teaming up and fighting back against the maniacal man-child’s attack were options never considered. Running was the only priority when Koozo struck. The growls of the engine sliced through the peace of the night as he charged toward us at top speed, around thirty miles per hour. Often, Koozo would brandish a thorn branch, which he would lash out at us as he passed, like a Roman piloting a chariot and swinging a whip. I also once saw him riding his moped with a lawn-pruning tool some eight feet in length, balanced on the handlebars like a medieval lancing joust. Koozo was one of those rare childhood characters who
wasn’t merely posturing—we figured that he aimed to hurt us, and if we stood around, he certainly would have.
    Just a few years ago I was talking with my mother about how, with age, perspective tends to change.
    â€œTake someone like Koozo,” I said. “To us, he was the most frightening person ever. To you guys, the grown-ups, he was probably just some weird hyperactive kid.”
    â€œOh no,” my mother answered. “I thought he was a maniac.”
    I looked at her in complete shock.
    â€œI mean, just from the little glimpses I got,” she said. “Koozo was scary.”
    Koozo’s strategy in capturing us was not unlike that of a large game cat as it approaches herd animals—isolate the slow, sick, or weak and allow the others to scatter. For example, Dave Kearns, one of the elder members of the fourteen-child-strong Kearns family, had notoriously bad knees. During one of Koozo’s attacks I watched as the deranged crackpot drove straight toward us, sending each kid looking for hiding