Please let me in. I'm so cold.

Growing up, my best friend was Matthew Ramsey. He was a year older than me, but still in my

grade. Not because he was stupid, but his father had died when he was in fourth grade,

and for a few months, Matt was having a lot of problems at home and at school. When he

got held back and put in my class, we became fast friends, and it wasn't long before I was

spending more time at his house than my own. Matt's mom was always nice, but she was also

working most of the time, so that meant we wound up hanging out with Matt's uncle Jean

more than anyone else. He left a store-owned device his most of the time, but if we were

having a sleep over, then Matt's mom had a late shift, Jean would come over and keep

an eye on us until she got home. Those nights, as some of my favourite memories of childhood,

hanging out with my best friend, while his cool uncle Cougter's hamburgers and older

stories he'd lived or heard during 20 years of travelling the world in the army. He was

retired on disability when I knew him, and just looking at the pot-bellied grey-head

man swinging a beer while absolutely poking at the grill. I had a hard time believing

he'd ever been a soldier, much less the globetrotting adventurer he told us about in his

stories. But, when he settled down and started talking, everything seemed to magically

change. Unlike a lot of adults, he seemed to understand and appreciate what we wanted

to hear and were interested in. Tales of battle and exotic lands, guns and tanks, interesting

people and dangerous creatures. As we spent time with him, I felt sure that he'd run

out of stories, but he never did. In fact, in the last 20 years I know him, he started

telling us about some of the stranger things he'd ever seen or heard of. If it was someone

else, I'd have immediately ridden their stories off his fantasy, increasingly elaborate

...