When I was in the eighth grade, I would hang out at my friend Kim’s house. Eighth grade is an awkward age. You’re too young to drive a car or get a job. And you’re too old to believe in Santa Claus.
We would take pellet guns into the woods behind his house for target practice. Like a couple of bounty hunters, we would shoot mistletoe from the tops of the trees.
It was one of the few ways you could get it down. It was a fungus that grew in the upper branches. It was out of reach. You couldn’t climb a ladder, pull it down with a rope, or knock it down with a slingshot, like David popping Goliath between the eyes.
We never harvested much mistletoe. I have to laugh about it now. I’m not sure what we knew what to do with it anyway.
At that age, we had started to notice girls. But we had no idea what to do next. We didn’t know how to get to first base. We were barely in the batter’s box.
We certainly had no interest in swapping slobber with a girl under a clump of poisonous green leaves.