It started out as a fairly normal day for a kid of about 11 years old or so. I was at my babysitters like every normal summer day and I'd just eaten lunch and was trying to figure out what to do that afternoon. A friend of mine lived close by and a bunch of my other friends would often congregate in his yard under a big tree and contemplate the afternoon.

After I told the babysitter where I was headed (it was only about 2 blocks away), I ran over to my friends and sure enough, he was swinging in the tire swing while another friend of mine was sitting in one of the usual spots. They told me that yet another friend was coming over in a couple minutes, but that nobody was still quite sure what was going on.

I'm kind of hazy on the details, but chances are that we ended up talking about Star Wars figures or something closely related to that until our other friend arrived. He sat down and after we talked for awhile more, we decided that we'd hike back into the forest behind the house and just run around and explore. It was a fairly standard afternoon activity of ours, since there was miles and miles of trees, but for some reason that day we were feeling particularly adventurous.

On most days, we'd wander in about a half mile or so and climb trees or throw sticks or rocks for an hour or so, but that day we decided to keep hiking past our known area. We had trees memorized and even slight trails worn in the underbrush of our usual areas, but beyond that we weren't too sure. We knew that if we hiked far enough in one direction, we'd reach the dump, while in the other direction were fields. We also knew that if we kept walking straight from our usual area, we'd eventually get to the limestone quarries, and I think that originally our goal was to hike until we reached it, then turn around and go home.

Of course, at that point we didn't know that it was actually something like 5 miles to the quarry, nor did we know that we'd be getting a little sidetracked that day by something we'd find. Although the trees were nearly in full bloom and it was mid summer, the undergrowth was fairly thin where we were walking and none of us had any fears about getting lost. There was still a full day (and partial night) of sunlight left and we all made sure to stomp down the grass and brush as we walked. We were young, but none of us wanted to get lost.

After what was probably a half hour of walking, we rounded the top of a hill and saw what would soon be our distraction for the afternoon. Sitting in the trees was an old red pickup. All the tires were flat on the rusty old thing and it was obvious that it hadn't been driven since probably before any of us were born, but it was something out of the ordinary and therefore needed to be explored a bit.

It didn't take long for someone to notice that there was a cardboard box sitting inside the pickup on the front seat that looked like it was full of comic books. Before I even really knew what was going on, two of my friends had pulled it out of the cab, carried it around, and sat it on the folded-down tailgate.

Of course, the box wasn't full of comic books, and all I remember seeing was naked skin and lots of it. Everyone was crowded around my one friend who had pulled it out and peering over his shoulder to see the spread-eagle shots of naked women. It was the first time that I'd seen anything like it, and I was confused and shocked and fascinated at the same time. I mean, I knew that things like it existed, but I'd never seen one in person (although my friends had told me about them).

After looking through the magazine that my one friend had pulled out, we all grabbed one of our own out of the box and slowly started flipping through the pages. As I looked through the one I had, I felt the same feelings I had when I first saw the pictures on the page over the shoulder of my friend, yet I slowly skimmed through the entire magazine before picking up another one. I was about halfway through the second magazine when I suddenly got freaked out.

I hadn't told my babysitter that I was going to be anywhere other than my friends house and then everyone else started to wonder just how long we'd been gone. We all tossed the magazines back into the box and instead of putting them back into the cab of the truck, we just left the box sitting outside on the tailgate as we ran back through the trees to my friends house.

Luckily, we didn't have any problems finding our way back, and I ran back to my babysitters as soon as I'd returned and told her a false story about where I'd been. She hadn't even wondered where I'd been and although I was relieved to not be in trouble, I still felt kind of weird from having looked at all the nude pictures in the magazines in the forest.

A couple days later, the same group of friends and I went back into the forest the same way we'd gone before, but when we got to the truck, the box and everything in it was gone. None of us were really too upset and one of my friends even remarked that his dad had some of the same magazines in his garage, but it didn't matter. We never went to see them, and we went back to climbing trees and throwing sticks or rocks while our conversations focused in again on Star Wars or GI Joe.

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