Ireland’s Crystal & Crafts 558 Congress street, Portland | 207 773-5832 Fiction 134 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine be seen and not heard.” He was busy all the time “puttering around the yard” and bare- ly acknowledged my friends, and if he did notice them, it was probably because they were doing something wrong. I remember him calling the neighbors one time because their kids were playing the stereo out the windows so the whole neighborhood could hear. I walked around in shame after that phone call. But what could I do? My friend Danny, on the other hand, definitely had cool parents. Richard and Celia Johnson were in their mid-30s when I first met Danny in Academy Park. Un- like my father, Richard actually liked his kids and would often be outside throwing the baseball or football. He must have been a BMOC in high school and college because he was tall, handsome, and athletic. Celia was also tall and a beautiful woman, and the kindest person in the neighborhood to the kids. Maybe because of their location, their house was “Grand Central Station.” It was always “We’ll meet at the Johnson's and then figure out what to do.” A nother notch in their belt was a birthday present that Danny re- ceived one year–a U.S. Diver Surf Lung One scuba toy. It was a plastic toy rep- lica of a Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau Aqua-Lung, but in reality, it was a snorkel that looked like a scuba tank. You put on the two-hose mouthpiece from the simulat- ed regulator, and you could breathe from a hole at the back that allowed surface air to enter. You could actually strap this baby on your back and go into the water. The buoy- ancy from the hollow plastic tank would keep you at the surface, allowing you to paddle around with a mask on and view the underwater world. Should you somehow submerge with this thing, a ball valve shut off the hole so you couldn’t breathe or take on water. It was the coolest present a kid could receive, having grown up first with Lloyd Bridges and Sea Hunt and then Cap- tain Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his Nation- al Geographic specials. Standing next to the garage by the path- way leading to the vacant lot, I double checked my gear. The Surf Lung One was strapped securely on my back, and I placed the big oval mask on my face, being care- ful not to breathe and fog up the lens. Con- fident that I was “ready to get wet,” I turned