come here and sit beside me little whippersnapper

live long

enough and you start to tell people

how it was

back in the day.

you start saying things like,

back in the day.

yes.

you're that old.

come here and sit

beside me

little whippersnapper,

and let me

tell you a story.

you try to ignore

the yawning,

as people rub their

eyes and look

at their watches,

but you tell them about gas being

twenty-nine cents

per gallon, or

the 235 dollars it cost

to rent your

first apartment

each month,

utilities included.

you talk about ten cent

cokes,

nickel ice cream cones,

twenty-five cent hamburgers.

two-dollar haircuts

and fifty cent

double features at the bijou.

you regal them

with the story of how

you stayed 

in a boardwalk hotel once

for five dollars a night.

of course there

was no air conditioning,

and no sheets

on the bunk beds, but hey.

we were young,

and it beat sleeping

out on the sand,

which was free, by the way.