Last week I signed up to be a mentor in a Big Brother-type program. I'm supposed to meet the kid, who's eight years old, next Monday.

Drew and I have both talked about doing this since the motherfucker in the photo to the right broke into our apartment in November. Said motherfucker is a fifteen year-old boy from our neighborhood who broke into our building five times before Drew set up his webcam to catch him in the act.

I was at school and he was at work when Drew's mac started emailing us a series of photos of the motherfucker strolling around our apartment. We gave the photos to the cops and they arrested him the next day.

Then the detective told us that this kid's family situation was unstable and that there wasn't much food in his house when they arrested him. Two months later the state removed him from the care of his single mother and sent him to some kind of juvenile facility.

All of which really has nothing to do with us, and clearly there are lots of kids who have those kinds of problems who don't choose to break into homes and steal shit. But we did feel sorry for the kid and tried to comfort ourselves with the thought that he'd be better off living in a more structured environment.

So now I'm mentoring this other kid to try and assuage my guilt over that whole thing. I know there's been some kind of abuse in this boy's life, but I don't know his complete story. To be honest I'm a little nervous, which I wasn't expecting. What do I do if this mentoring boy wants me to throw & catch some kind of ball? What do I tell him or not tell him about my relationship with Drew? What if he doesn't like me? I guess those are petty concerns and I should just concentrate on getting to know this kid and trying to let him have some fun. The mentoring program will reimburse me for anything we do together, and will even pay for a trip to Disneyland. So it should be fun. I'm going to have a positive attitude about it and choose not to be intimidated by an eight year-old. They're not all little motherfuckers.