The Boy Wonder as a Boy

Yesterday we spent the whole evening drinking Lynchburg Lemonades and going through the Boy Wonder's school books from his formative years, a process which left us both on the verge of seizures at various points of the night. For some reason, it appears that the Boy Wonder has barely changed in the last 20+ years meaning his project on 'A Treasure Hunt' featured a banjo, there was a very informative little side-bar about Leo Fender in completely unrelated story and pictures of guitars adorn the pages of most of his work books. The main difference between the young Boy Wonder and that of the present day is the fact that, as a callow youth, the Boy Wonder was convinced he could skateboard. From what I can gather from all concerned, there was no evidence to support this belief but still his stories are peppered with tales of derring do undertaken by skateboarding protagonists (who are called Keith with inexplicable frequency) and almost every character has cause to do an ollie at some point. Tragically, there was even one story about a talking roll of Flypaper Grip Tape trying to wake up a Ray Barbee Deck for a chat, which made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to swallow my tongue. As entertaining as the products of the Boy Wonder's imagination are, there is something intrinsically engaging about his writing style. He points out that he finds it hard to write about things he has seen as 'I haven't a very good memory' and describes his artistic shortcomings when it comes to pastille work as 'substantially over the top with blending colours'. His way with words was charmingly old fashioned at that age, making his reflections on his own abilities seem exceptionally insightful. Coupled with the fact that his handwriting was considerably better between the ages of 7 and 10 than it is now, we have uncovered quite the treasure trove of entertainment.