My boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird agreed with Miss Lena about the motor scooter. “Yo’ mama is right,” he said. “Paying two hundred dollars for a scooter is foolish.” Then, after thinking a bit, he said, “However, if you justify needing it instead of just wanting it, she might feel differently, and I will, too. Find a job, repay the money she loans you, and prove that you know the value of a hard-earned dollar.”
In time I found a job riding the scooter while earning money to pay for it: an after-school newspaper route. Everything went great on the first run until I tossed a paper in a driveway that awakened a ferocious Rottweiler named Attila from his afternoon nap. By the time the scooter gained enough speed to escape, the enraged dog was within a jaw snap of clamping down on my leg.
