"The mosquito truck’s coming! The mosquito truck’s coming!" shouted the boy as he raced down the street on his bicycle. Other kids in the neighborhood heard his cries and bolted from their houses like volunteer firemen chasing their very first brushfire. They hopped on identical mountain bikes and bolted from identical driveways, jumping curbs, riding wheelies, and somehow, like a decimated dandelion bud reassembling itself, convened on a street corner just up the road from our newly minted house in the suburbs.

One latecomer, I assumed too young to ride a bicycle, showed up on a push scooter wearing a WW II gasmask. The other boys taunted him, and one kid, who I later discovered was his older brother, pushed him to the asphalt. The masked little one righted himself, picked some gravel from his hands and circled around to the back of the group, where he affected a most regal posture.

Although I had no burning desire to join this merry band of road warriors I felt like the neighborhood misfit. I didn’t own a bicycle, or a scooter for that matter, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to ride one. Where I came from the only thing I knew how to ride was the 7-train to Shea Stadium. And besides the want of suitable means of transportation, I was forbidden to leave the property. The suburban roads were a deathtrap according to my mother. They went on endlessly, unfettered by stop signs or traffic signals and were draped in shadow by tall, haunting trees. Cars could go as fast as they pleased, unseen, turning blind corners, running over oblivious city boys like myself who were used to seeing a little red or green man just to let them know when it was safe to cross the street.

I climbed a large oak tree on our front lawn and squinted up the street through my binoculars. An older boy wearing a sleeveless denim jacket held his hands in the air and pleaded for calm. "Shut the fuck up!" he shouted. It seemed a tense moment altogether; hands gripped handlebars, each boy planted a foot on a pedal at the start of a down cycle and readied himself to burst out of the starting gate. I hear it, someone cried.

Faintly, I too heard it, a sputtering noise, which sounded like an old lawn mower struggling to get up to cutting speed. The sputtering grew louder, and from around the corner, coming onto Bayview Drive from Willow Lane, was the mosquito truck, leaving a menacing gray fog in its wake and transforming the landscape into a suburban alter ego. In the mist split-level ranches and A-frames dissolved into sheer cliffs and mountain peaks. Cars became grazing elephants. Oak and elm trees sprouted palm fronds and grew coconuts.

Through the binoculars, I watched the town bug man carefully move up the street. He drove the truck toward the group of boys at an easy jogger’s pace and when he reached them, the gang broke apart and disappeared, one by one, into the fog, with the small boy on the scooter following up the pack. When the procession reached my house the bug man spotted me hanging in the tree and smiled. He lifted four fingers from the steering wheel and gave me a quick little wave. He was the first person in the neighborhood to officially greet me. I was so taken aback by his hospitality that I didn’t know what to do. I gave a little wave back, but it was too late.

The neighborhood boys; including one who would become my best friend, another who would give me my first black eye, one who would repeatedly call my father a pig and a nark, one who would kick my dog and break its ribs, another would teach me about sex — specifically about how my mother and father copulated, and another still would show me how to drink, smoke pot and drop acid; they all trailed the kind-hearted bug man, heard, but not seen, hooting and hollering, having the time of their lives.

The noxious fumes spread out across our yard in a dark rolling wave, knocking mosquitoes for a loop and engulfing me in the process. I coughed once, feebly, then dropped from the tree like an overripe piece of fruit and ran into the house. I went straight up to my room and dove on the bed. Somewhere in the house my younger brother practiced the trombone. I lay there in bed, listening to his maddening rendition of Hot Cross Buns and thinking that we had moved only an hour’s drive from the city, but it might as well have been in North Dakota. Later that evening I asked my father teach me how to ride a bicycle.