The pervert up the street left Smugsy speechless for the first and last time.

It was second grade, and after school Smugsy and her friend Christine loved to climb really big Ash trees on the abandoned estate across the street from their neighborhood. It was spooky because the house had burned down.

Some of the charred walls of the structure remained. Burnt mattresses with rusty coils springing out of them were in a heap. The ground was littered with scorched bric-a-brac amidst vine-like weeds growing wild. The perfect spot for a human sacrifice or something.

Smugsy and Christine sat high up in the trees after school and talked about stuff. They always endeavored to include crackers.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon until the new weird family moved in up the hill from Smugsy’s house.

The older boy began riding his bike back and forth along the estate’s driveway past where Smugsy and Christine went up in the trees to eat their crackers. The trees lined the driveway. The boy had no hands on his handlebars as he rode back and forth and he sat up straight with an enormous bulging pinkish body-part sticking straight out of the fly of his pants.

At the time there were no words in Smugsy or Christine’s limited 8 year-old vocabulary to describe what they saw. It was a complete mystery — boys are so strange, they thought — and they went back to talking and snacking.

The boy became known as “No Pants” and the only thing that came to Smugsy’s mind at the time was to avoid No Pants’s house on Halloween when they went trick or treating.

Other than that No Pants on his bike with his thing sticking out became part of Smugsy’s everyday life in the neighborhood.

“Did you see No Pant’s new bike?” Smugsy said to Christine.

“Look, Smugsy, there’s No Pants again with that thing sticking out. Did you know his dad plays drums in a rock band,” she said in reply.

Smugsy and her friends roamed around and played outside until they were let back in the house at the end of the day by their parents.

It was a jungle out there. To survive they had to cope. No Pants began to “fit in” in the neighborhood in a weird and sort of disturbing way.

Smugsy didn’t tell her parents or her teachers about No Pants’ odd behavior because what could she say? There were no words at the time in her tool kit to use to describe what she thought she saw or how it made her feel.

One day No Pants and his family went away.

Maybe they are gypsies, thought Smugsy.

The neighborhood felt a little safer to Smugsy and Christine but it was still a jungle.

A few years later Smugsy read a collection of her older sister’s paperback novels under the covers and learned a whole new language and way of life.

Wow.

Smugsy realized there was much more to the No Pants story but she would never be able to write a book about it like her sister’s “romance” novels because she didn’t know enough words.

That day Smugsy decided to learn to use as many words as possible as often as possible.

People like No Pants deserve a proper description.

The lesson of No Pants was an important one for Smugsy in her formative years.

Now she loves the power of words and the risk of using her voice. In fact sometimes she won’t shut up.

But don’t blame Smugsy.

Blame No Pants.