Nate's a smart kid. Not a smooth criminal by any stretch, but a smart kid. When he was somewhere between two and three (somewhere around the time of the hopping vibrator incident), he escaped from the apartment in the very early morning. I say 'very early' meaning 'sometime before noonish'.

We lived in a third floor apartment that looked down onto the playground. Nate was always wanting to go there -- any kid wants to go to a playground, you know. There was a big slide and swings and teeter totters, but there was also a lot of broken glass out there. It just wasn't a really nice place and I wouldn't take him there very often.

So this particular morning I was sleeping in. My bedroom door was just a foot or two from Nate's bedroom door and we slept with both doors open so I could hear him when he got up. Usually. This time he was unusually quiet. I don't know how long he was up before I started coming around to realize he was in my doorway saying, "Don't get up, I'm just changing my socks." 'Okay,' I thought. I turned over. I shut my eyes again. I realized I felt a cold breeze in my bedroom. That didn't make any sense unless the front door was open -- it was February, after all. And then I really heard what he'd said. "Don't get up...I'm just changing my socks." Huh? What the heck was he changing his socks for? And why didn't he want me to get up? For crying out loud...usually he couldn't wait to get me out of bed. I was just sitting up when I saw him go running past my door wearing nothing but a diaper and a pair of socks. By that time I was fully awake and I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late. I went into the living room at a full run just in time to see him disappearing out the door.

Granted, I was an adult and he was a little kid, but he had an advantage over me in the speed department. I, being in a huge great hurry, had left my glasses laying beside my bed and could barely see. I ran out of the house in a loose gown - no shoes, no bra, and no glasses. And a ferocious case of bed head. By the time I got down the stairs, all I could see of Nate was just a little bit of tannish skin and a bright white dot of diaper bouncing along through the parking lot. It was a big parking lot and I was terrified he was going to get run over. I chased him probably about 150 yards, weaving through parked cars, before I caught up with him.

All that happened so fast that I didn't really figure out until I was on the way back to the apartment with Nate tucked firmly under my arm why exactly he was changing his socks. He'd gone out to the playground before I woke up wearing just his diaper and socks and the cold, damp ground got his socks all muddy. He was coming in for a fresh pair. It was the middle of February, probably 34 degrees outside. He didn't bother to find a shirt or pants, but he wanted to have clean dry socks for playing outside. Like I said, he's a smart kid.

I had to leave the couch pushed in front of the living room door at night for the next two weeks or so because Nate kept waking before me and trying to get out again. There's no coming between a boy and the playground sometimes.

I have known an unusual number of people who've been murdered. I didn't know any of them very well, or intimately, but nine still seems kind of a high number for a middle class white girl. Ok, lower middle class -- but still, that's a bunch. This only has a minor bearing on the story I'm about to tell, which I'll explain momentarily.

I was eighteen, still living with my mother, still in church. A friend of mine from church, Deidre, was living with us. My cousin Bill, Uncle Linc's son, was her boyfriend. The three of us spent a lot of time at the church and with the church crowd because Deidre and I were still very much in church, and Bill lived in the parsonage with his dad, although he was an unrepentant wildass. One of Bill's buddies from church was this guy named Greg who lived in the basement of the church and worked as the church handyman. Greg was a good bit older than we were...somewhere in his forties. He was a big, heavy man with greasy dark hair and thick dark-rimmed glasses that always settled down on the end of his nose. He was missing half of his right hand, something which had happened as a result of an industrial accident. He gave me the creeps from the moment I met him, but Bill was convinced he was harmless. Greg was also a big drinker. I don't know how he ended up working for the church, but it wasn't because he was interested in serving any god other than the bottle.

One night, Bill brought Greg to my house. My mother was gone (probably at Denzel's, since this happened around the time they were starting to hook up). I don't remember exactly how much beer Bill and Greg put away, but it was a lot. Bill was nearly out on his feet. It fell to me to drive Greg back to the church. I didn't want to. I wasn't comfortable around him at all, but I didn't much like the idea of him staying all night in our house either. I tried to get Deidre or Bill to ride along, but they both refused. So it was just me and Greg.

I hadn't driven more than half a mile when Greg started talking to me about 'the evil'. He didn't want to do the evil, he said, but he had to. He hoped I'd understand that he had to do the evil. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but it was freaking me out. When I go to the church, he wouldn't get out of the car. Just kept going on about doing the evil. Again, I didn't know what 'the evil' was, but I knew I didn't want any part of it, and I was afraid his plans included me. I finally gave up on getting him to get out of the car at the church and drove him to a local bar instead, where he did get out.

I was relieved to get rid of him, but I didn't think too much about how he'd freaked me out until a few months later. I figured he'd just been drunk. And maybe he was. And maybe Bill was right and he was completely harmless. But there was a girl, Cindy, who used to hang around the church. She was about my age, and very pretty, but she was so messed up on drugs and so deeply disturbed and crazy. It was sad to be around her. I don't know what exactly her relationship with Greg was, but they spent a lot of time together. A few months after my run-in with Greg, Cindy turned up dead - one of the unusual number of murdered people I've met. She'd been beaten severely and left outside to die of exposure. A man from Michigan was arrested and convicted of the crime. He looked just like Greg. And I've never been confident that the police got the right guy. I mean, what kind of person goes around talking about doing 'the evil'? Maybe not necessarily a serial killer. I don't know. But it sure freaked me out.

I was so sad when Cindy was killed. I hadn't known her well, but something about her touched me. I had painted murals in the church basement and she used to come around and sit and talk with me while I painted. She was so earnest and seemed so hungry for someone to just be kind to her. She'd had a horrific nightmare of a life. I wish things had been different for her.

A few years ago, when I still lived with my ex girlfriend, Kallie (not her real name -- I am having a ball changing the names to protect the innocent), I was upstairs doing something on the computer. Kallie was lying in the bed reading a book. It was late in the evening and the house was peaceful and quiet. I don't remember where Kallie's rowdy boychildren were (possibly at their father's house), but mine was quietly playing Nintento downstairs and just being angelic in general. I thought.

When I heard Nate knock on the door, I didn't even turn to look, just said 'come in,' and kept on typing. He quietly crossed the room and stood beside me. When I glanced over, it took me a few seconds to realize exactly what I was seeing. There stood Nate, stark naked except for a pair of shorts he'd made out of shaving cream. When the three of us stopped laughing (Kallie had looked up at about the same time I did), I asked him what the heck he was thinking. His response was that he'd gone into the bathroom and noticed a can of shaving cream in there, and then he thought to himself, 'Live a little.'

Sometimes I wish I was more like Nate.

Live a little. I'm tellin' ya.