The first Jason Townsend I knew was in Illinois the summer before we moved away. He was really more of Drew's friend than mine, but we all used to play together there on Country Squire Drive, in Urbana. Coincidentally, we had a Country Squire Station Wagon then but it didn't make the trip to Massahoey - killed that spring by 10 year old Drew when he was backing it out of the driveway, couldn't find the brakes, panicked and stopped it (forever) by forcing it into drive while rolling backwards downhill. Clunk. That Jason Townsend, the first one, had a little brother. I think he was named Jeff, and I knew him better than I knew Jason. Jeff introduced me to the concept of 'ghost-runners' when playing baseball, and taught me the time-honored 'ink, stink, poop, fart, out' methodology for determining who was 'it' in a game of tag. One time Jeff and I lit a bunch of matches in the 'fort' we had set up in his front yard, in the shelter formed by the bottom branches of a huge pine tree. We miraculously did not succeed in our goal of setting the tree on fire, even though there was ample tinder. The second Jason Townsend was my very good friend in Massachusetts, from pretty much my first day in town in 3rd grade all the way through into middle school when we drifted apart. He was a New Englandy guy from a New Englandy family. Lived in a super cool old house with coal and wood stoves for heat. Built in the 1780's or something. They spent their summers driving around the dunes on Cape Cod in a converted bread truck. He and his sister Kimmy worked mowing lawns and stuffing bags of nasty fiberglass fabric for their entrprenuerial grandfather, saving pennies for months, and finally bought an Atari 2600. That thing was freaking sweet. Jason and I lit his back yard on fire (throwing smoke bombs into the dry leaves surrounding an old stone fence. Smart!), and the fire department came and squirted water on it for about 10 seconds, and told us we were going to have to pay back the $500 it cost the town to have the truck come down and put out the fire. I have yet to recieve a bill, but I was extremely worried about it at the time. Jason was there on the snowday when Drew sledded face first into the brick wall at the old folks home and smashed his face so badly that I thought he was dead. The old folks watching out the window thought he got killed too, I suspect. Jason went around front to try and get help but Drew had sort of come-to at that point, and so we walked home and by the time Jason got back with a nurse we were gone, and there was just a big bloody mess in the snow. At least she knew he wasn't lying. Interestingly, the sled that Drew was riding that day was called The Black Knight, and that was the sled that several years earlier, back in Urbana, was being ridden by my mom and my other brother Eian when they hit a tree and broke mom's ankle. The Black Knight was a big, heavy black plastic sled with steel braking handles. Even after two not-insignificant injuries it was our sled of choice. It was a great sled. They don't make 'em like that anymore. A few weeks after I met Jason, the second one, we were walloping each other with sticks in the woods behind my house when I asked him what his last name was. When he told me it was 'Townsend' I said "Hey! I knew another Jason in Illinois!" (as I said this I sort of half-realized that I had neglected to specify that I knew another Jason TOWNSEND, a pretty salient point, and that this initial omission was not going to do me any credibility favors in Jason's eyes when I added it on). Jason, of course, said, "Not another Townsend." "Yeah huh!" I said, "Jason Townsend. And he's black!" Jason Townsend number 2 didn't believe me, and I can't really say I blamed him. But it was true. I knew two Eric Coopers, too. The first one was my good friend in Shrewsbury. We were theater dorks together. I went to his Bar Mitzvah, receiving for my trouble a black t-shirt that said "I HAD A BLAST AT ERIC'S" with clip-art of some fireworks going off. That was the first black t-shirt I ever owned, and I wore it often and proudly until my mom gave it to Goodwill because it had gotten too small. Man, I did have blast at Eric's. The ceremony itself was interesting, but really just as baffling as every other religious event I have attended before or since. The reception party dealybob after the ceremony, however, was at his house and it was great! I stuffed myself with little catered treats, canapes and whatnot (I have in my mind that scallops wrapped in bacon were among them, but that seems a mind-bogglingly un-kosher thing to serve at a Bar Mitzvah -- even to the goyem). There was loud music and good food and giant tubs of ice cold soda, and then all the kids stayed up all night playing Bump-n-Jump on the Intellivision and listening to Eric's new copy of Culture Club's "Colour by Numbers" LP over and over. Sixth grade, maybe? Good times. Eric would, a year or two later at some theater function, very helpfully inform some girl, who had aproached Eric to ask him to ask me to ask HER on a date, that I didn't like girls. He off-handedly mentioned this service that he had performed on my behalf some time later. Thanks dude. Thanks a pantload. Eric Cooper number two I met at summer camp in high school, and a few years later was one of the driving forces behind me moving to Brooklyn to live in The Space and later the Bedford Haus. He's a really good guy, veteran of a million hardcore bands and character in a million anecdotes (like the time he, while sleepwalking, got out of bed, opened the tape loader door on top of his AM/FM/Casette clock radio, peed into it and got back in bed, a story related to us by the only witness - his perplexed, disgusted, and amused girfrliend of the time, Sandy), and although I haven't seen or spoke to him since moving away from New York I hear OF him from time to time. Where was I going with all of this?