(Sorry, but I think you�re gonna have to read through pretty carefully to understand this� and it�s kinda long.)

The day started out just like any other (thankful) Friday, quickly finishing up homework at lunch, trying to concentrate after five cups of cappuccino, and joking around with the usual gang. MD informed me that I must come with her after school to go to her little brother�s play.

(That was kind of random, but hell I had nothing better to do.) It was a cute play, �The Pied (?) Piper� and I made a dollar when I bet MD that the little kids weren�t going to die in the play� (even though she didn�t give me the dollar because she assures me they all die in the real story), but we agreed to spend the dollar on a coke to split. We went to the car while MD�s rents were discussing and congratulating after the kids took their final bow.

I never did quite make a truce with their car door. It doesn�t like me, I swear. Darn thing never closes. MD sighs and rolls her eyes, puts the keys down, and comes over to shut the car door for me, but locks the keys in the car. Both sets of keys, actually. I thought it was hilarious and proceeded to roll back in laughter as the poor girl frantically tried to get back into the mini-van, but to no avail. Her rents and I called her blond for a while, and we ended up walking back to the house to see if there were more keys there.

To make a long story short, I ended up spending the night at her house since it was so late by the time we got triple A, and what not. We watched �The Goonies� (weird movie), and rolled around the air mattress before going to sleep.

Ever since MD was a kid, she�s had this crush on this guy, who now goes to Del Norte. She�s been bugging me for past couple months about going to his game to see what he looks like now, since she doesn�t want to go by herself. The guy probably doesn�t even know who she is, and will not recognize her. She�s too chicken to say anything, and she won�t let me confront him so the whole point is just to let MD see him. It bugged me, and I kept fighting not to go, but since I spent the night at her house she drug me there at exactly 10 in the morning.

Well that was all swell and dandy; except for we then found that the game wasn�t going to start until 12:30. We sat in the empty lot for a few minutes, debating what to do for the next two and a half hours, me asking her why the hell we�re here in the first place, and taking note of the very very old man jogging at about � mile an hour around the track.

�Whoa� That�s pretty sad, Mo, that guy is in better shape than us��

I bitched about being out in the hot sweaty sun and walking around town, stranded for a good hour and a half.

�Why, MD, WHY?!?!?!?� And she really didn�t have much of an answer. It was obvious to us both that the trip to see her crush wasn�t worth all the misery, but for some odd reason we trudged on.

Finally her crush appeared, and we saw him, and she freaked out, bladiblahdiblah. At 12:00, the sun had taken a toll on us, and we sat on the metal bleachers baking like a couple of forgotten baloney sandwiches, waiting for her mom to come finally pick us up.

�I think that one guy died,� she said, jokingly, looking through the chain-linked fence from atop the bleachers.

�Where? Oh, over there�� I chuckled at the sight of the old man, far off in the distance, draped backward over a cement thing.

I complained a little while longer to her about the sun, and looked over at the old man once again, still lying there, in the exact same position.

�Oh my god, he�s still there�� we laughed again.

�You see! He really is dead!� You see, once MD gets these ideas in her head, there�s no stopping her. I recall when we went to play racquetball with Chance, and she was paranoid about the little ball shooting into her eye socket, and sucking her eyeball out� or the time she found out fruits were the plant�s ripened ovaries and refused to eat fruit for awhile. She also has this thing about not eating a certain part of the egg, claiming its �chicken placenta�. I could go on all day, but anyway.

We eventually jumped off the bleachers and went over to the chain-linked fence surrounding the track out of sheer boredom, gripping onto it with our sunburnt fingers and staring for a while.

�Do you think he passed out?�

�Maybe.�

�Should we go tell that cop over there?�

It was fun fantasizing about the poor old man being dead, but in the back of both our minds we figured he was just lying down and he�d get up or move at any moment, and we�d drop the subject and just make it another addition to our boring day.

�Well�� I said, �There�s only one way to find out��

�We can�t go over there!�

�Oh come on, MD, he�ll probably get up as we�re half way over there and make us look like fools anyway.�

�Old guys don�t use�ally bend like that LauRyn��

She had a point. She started freaking out as I tied my shirt around my waist and started walking across the football field towards our dude.

The guy�s mouth was open, his chest wasn�t moving up and down, and his feet weren�t touching the ground.

We got about half way there when I looked over and saw MD�s mom�s white van drive by. That gave MD an excuse to stop me in my path. We rushed over and told her mom in a fanatical panic, realizing how stupid we sounded. Her mom went and parked the van and got out MD�s four year old little sister, Haley. They walked over and told the cop, who was watching the now ongoing game.

He sighed, and reluctantly started his way across the field. Probably thinking something along the lines of, �Stupid paranoid kids� god, what I go through for a paycheck��

We rushed over to our chain link fence again and watched, getting ourselves ready to feel really stupid when the old man got up. Poor old man, can�t an old folk take a rest without being poked at?!?

The police officer stopped dead in his tracks about ten feet from the old man, and we saw him reach for his radio. He made some sort of call and started just standin� there, pivoting. He went a little bit closer and looked to be trying to talk to the old man, but he didn�t get up.

I think that�s when it all began to set in. The old man was not getting up. He wasn�t okay. Our healthy little 95-year-old jogger� was dead.

I looked over and saw that the people in the stands were no longer watching the game, but all had our eyes on us, the police officer with the weird look on his face, and the guy lying draped over.

MD�s mom had us go over to the van to find a blanket of some sort, so we could at least prevent the guy from sunburning or anything. We walked over to the dead man with our blanket, and stood there for a moment, waiting for the cop to get off his walkie-talkie.

�Yeah, we have about a 75 year old man on the corner of ********* and ******� seems to have hit his head and falled over�� The cop proceeded to go on in his technical, polite talk for, �Hey man these kids and I found a dead guy, get over here quick so I don�t have to look at him any longer.� MD and I just stared at the body.

�and let me tell you something people� the old man was DEFINITELY dead. His eyes were open, his hat was behind his head with a little bit of blood on it, his mouth was open about 160 degrees, and the worst part was his lifeless body was turning blue and purple along his sun scorched skin.

We stared for what seemed like a century, the cop knowing we were there� and I was quite surprised he didn�t tell us to not come any closer, or anything like that.

The ambulance arrived. We stared from behind the fence a little while longer while they covered him up and filled out forms. Haley didn�t stop asking questions about what was happening, even though she wouldn�t really understand what was happening.

The dead guy would stick in our minds forever. Not a cool picture.

If MD hadn�t randomly had me go to her little brother�s play�

If both sets of keys hadn�t gotten locked in the car�

If we had found out that the game was postponed to 12:30, or gone to the later one�

If we had gone home�

We wouldn�t have found the dead man, and nobody else cared, so he would�ve been lying there baking in the sun for hours, even days. MD thinks we could have stopped him, maybe noticed him earlier and called for help if he was still alive after bumping his head behind him.

Maybe there are even other things� like�

If once upon a time, MD�s parents hadn�t met MD�s crush�s parents by bumping into each other at church, and MD hadn�t even known him because of that�or

If MD�s rents had decided to get the mini-van with the car door that got along with me, and MD had never locked the keys in the car� etc.

Just makes you think, you know?

�Mommy is he gonn� be all right?�

�No, Haley Baby, but he�s with Jesus now.�

�but at least I supposedly know why we went to Del Norte today.