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Barry

Little Barry told his mom he wanted spurs for his seventh birthday, and she replied over my dead body without glancing away from The Price Is Right.

Although Little Barry’s brain struggled to process the reference, Little Barry intuitively understood that his mother’s response was less promising than maybe or we’ll see, and probably amounted to no. But since she hadn’t specifically said no, he decided he’d ask her again later, tomorrow maybe, and slumped off to his bedroom.

Little Barry also intuitively understood that he needn’t bother bringing up pierced earrings, and that his mother loathed the very sight of Big Barry—a fact which thoroughly confused Little Barry, because Little Barry wanted to be just like Big Barry, the coolest dad of all the dads of all the kids he could think of who had at least one.

None of the other kids’ dads rode a motorcycle as big or as loud as Big Barry’s, for example. None of the other dads even had a motorcycle as far as Little Barry was concerned, because he was pretty certain Jimmy’s father’s Vespa didn’t count. And even if it did count, Big Barry’s motorcycle, which Big Barry called his “hog,” was twice as big and about a hundred times as loud. Why, compared with Big Barry’s hog, Jimmy’s father’s Vespa seemed no louder than his mom’s portable sewing machine.

And it pretty much goes without saying that Jimmy’s father did not wear spurs while riding his Vespa. What would have been the point of that?

Safely ensconced in his bedroom, Little Barry extracted from beneath his pillow the red bandana Big Barry had bought him from Piratemerch.com and tied it on his head as best he could. Then he dragged his mother’s Samsonite suitcase out from under his bed where she stored it, set it upright in the middle of the floor, and climbed on. The suitcase made a pretty good motorcycle if Little Barry pretended hard enough, even though it was pink.

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