Unicycle Watch 2008: A Retrospective

Open with a montage of slow-motion, sun washed clips of boys wobbly, then mastering their unicycles, milk carton fights in the middle of the street, diligently practicing jumps and spins on their homemade obstacle course...  

(the shrieks of happy children and strains of something nostalgic in the background?  Maybe Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World"?)

I realized that I hadn't seen the unicycling brothers in a while.  I thought it might be the weather keeping them in.  Or the new season of Big Love.  But their prolonged absence makes me think the cause is more sinister or at least more mysterious.  Like the Mycenaeans, a bright spot in the history of civilization, then never to be heard from again, likely sacked by the Dorians.  Which would explain all the yelling I heard from that end of the cul-de-sac last week, come to think of it.

Well yesterday while walking the dog I noticed the older one in the front yard awkwardly talking to a gangly tween.  Oh.  How pedestrian.  Same timeless story of little boys outgrowing their toys.  Jackie Paper abandons his dragon once again.

Fade out from a still of unicycle lying in the front yard, rusting from its own tears.