“Why don’t you grab it and put it in the VCR while I add a couple of logs to the fire.” As I slipped the videotape into the machine, I noticed our old high school yearbook inside the glass cabinet in the entertainment center.

“William, is this what I think it is?” I pulled it out. “Is this our yearbook? Oh my God. I haven’t seen this in ages.”

“Neither have I.”

“Ha, look at your bowtie! It’s almost as big as your head. And your hair. You had a Jheri Curl?”

“I didn’t have a Jheri Curl. I had a texturizer.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not. My gel didn’t drip. Shall we flip to your picture? ’Cause I wasn’t the only one using gel.” He grabbed the book and flipped to my page.

“And here we are. Montana Moore, also known as Baby Hair! Looking like ghetto Elvis.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; baby hair was in back then.”

“Not for an eighteen year old, it wasn’t. I coulda killed you when I went to brush my teeth and my brand-new toothbrush was covered with brown gook.”

“That wasn’t gook. That was the good gel that kept the baby hair in place. Man, those were the days!”

“Yeah they were. Remember the poem you wrote in the back of my book?” He flipped to the back of the book and pointed out the poem I had written.

So fresh and so ill.

So cool and so chill.

Come day or come night.

You’re my rapper’s delight.

“I did not write that!”

“Yes, you did! And you signed it. Look, see there? ‘Love. Baby Hair.’”

“You better stop calling me Baby Hair, looking like Oh Sheila. ‘Oh…Oh Sheila, Oh-oh-oh-oh, Oh Sheila.’ You weren’t just Ready For The World, you were ready for the entire galaxy!’” I said, as we both started cracking up.

“Okay, you got me. That was good. Ready for the galaxy. That was good. But for real, after all these years, I still can’t figure out what the poem meant.”

“What it meant was since the song was the hottest rap song of all time, I was saying that you were the hottest young brother of all time.”

“Oh, like Ali. Right, I shook up the world!”

“There you go!”

As the pages turned, and the fire logs burned, we laughed and reminisced, never once watching the movie, and never once caring. It was like we were back in high school. Carefree. Responsibility free. A time when the only thing that mattered was what time the streetlights came on and who said she said he said about who.

“Guess what I found the other day? You’re going to really trip out on this,” he said, disappearing into the hallway and returning with a stethoscope.

“No, that isn’t that raggedy ole stethoscope you used to play Doctor.”