The teenage twins had been nice,
happy guys, always a smile, always fun
when they lived in the small city
of Woburn, Massachusetts where
I lived too.
Their family moved to a larger city,
Arlington, Massachusetts.
And the twins morphed into something
unimagined, unbelievable.
I and a friend met them a year later
in Arlington, and they had hardened.
They spoke of gang fighting, kicking
ass and using high kicks to win fights
by kicking guys in their heads.
They even looked different, like
hardcore hoodlums with hard eyes.
On the night we were with them
in Arlington, they invited us to a
gang war with some preppy
guys
which started just as we wisely
hightailed it back to Woburn.
I will never forget how a mere
move to another city changed
those twins for the worst.
And thinking about them, I
wonder if they ever changed
back to the nice guys they
were, or did some crazy
criminal things and went
to jail for years or for life.
Bob Boyd
