How many people can you fit in a 1989 Subaru Justy?
In the 6th grade, I was a miserable little shit.
Unhappy at home, unhappy at school, struggling to find a place in the world. I was very smart and not very wise and one of these is normal in the 6th grade while the other just causes you problems. My mouth was forever running free, leaving the rest of me to field the consequences and I felt neither wanted nor appreciated until I met Jim Nordman.
Jim was the computer teacher at the school I went to and Jim was the sort of teacher who immediately understood what flavor of sad bastard I was. He recognized an outcast when he saw one, being one himself. He was a closeted gay man, with a wife and two kids, and he taught computers to 6th graders in the late 80s. He was also kind, and funny, and patient, and he could tell I needed a friend. He introduced me to his youngest son, Kyle, who was just a year or two older than me, and we became fast friends. And his house and family became a refuge for me as my relationship with my father deteriorated and I sought escape velocity.
I spent every moment possible at his house, hanging out with Kyle. We would spend hours playing Bard’s Tale and Leisure Suit Larry and dozen of other games on their computer, dialing in to BBS’ to chat with people about this and that. Kyle introduced me to Allen and Shane and Ryan and Mel and Kevin and quite a few others and we formed an impenetrable gang of misfits whose capacity to love each other was only rivaled by our capacity to get into the weirdest fucking trouble imaginable. We were not drinkers or drug users, we were nerds. Dorks of the highest caliber. So when we got in trouble it was things like buying grappling hooks and ninja climbing spikes at the flea market and trying to scale things at 3 am that we should not have been trying to scale. It was cramming nine people into a Subaru Justy hatchback and making it all the way home before getting caught by Kyle’s mom and losing the car for the weekend.
We never did anything really malicious or even that dangerous, we were just very creative dumbasses. One fun thing we did was discover a shitload of wild potatoes growing near Allen’s house and decide to have wars in the woods where we literally just hurled wild potatoes at each other. Full force. We started making leather armor for ourselves to wear while doing this, because that somehow made it safer or something. We had bruises and welts the size of grapefruits all over our bodies but it was free and, for some fucking reason, really fun.
We all came from dysfunctional homes of one flavor or another, and we all trauma bonded hard over every bump. Someone was always getting kicked out of their house or getting into a fight with a parent or step-parent. Someone was always trying to scrape together money to buy groceries for their family or sheepishly admitting they couldn’t do something because they couldn’t afford it. We covered each other, constantly. We were thick as thieves and none of us ever wanted for anything as long as the rest were around.
Kyle and I were both hyper-competitive and constantly vying to be the “leader” of our little group, although neither of us would ever admit it. We also couldn’t admit that we all knew if our group had a leader it was Allen, because he was the only one of us smart enough not to want the job. I wanted out of Jacksonville and moved away to Tallahassee because some other friends were going and it was an easy way to get the fuck out. After I moved, my life moved pretty fast. I drifted away from the gang. I found a new group of miscreants at the Epitome Community Coffeemuseum, the sort of coffee shop that existed and thrived only during the 90s and early 2000s. I was in a different place in my life, and this new gang was in that same place…emotionally and geographically. I met Helene and Adam and Brandon and Derek and Amy and Flavio and Michelle and Vilma and Christa and Andrew and Steven so many more and we formed a new pod of dreamers and fuck-ups, exploring our 20s with the kind of reckless stupidity that your 20s are just perfect for. Broken hearts, too much coffee, not enough sleep, and drama drama drama and it was all just absolutely perfect.
This was about the time I got into yoyoing, and as that part of my life took off I found myself moving again, this time to Ohio. And as I emotionally drifted away from my old pod I found myself in the position where I no longer lived somewhere that lent itself to forming a new group of friends. I was older and working a ton, I was traveling constantly, I didn’t have the energy or desire or even the free time to go out all the time and I found that the strongest relationships I was building were with my friends in the yoyo community…who were scattered all over the world.
Sure, I could land in just about any major city in the world and have a friend to call, but when I got home I felt alone. It put a huge strain on my first marriage and definitely contributed to that ending, especially since I wasn’t emotionally mature enough at that point to understand the feelings I was having let alone figure out how to deal with them in a healthy and productive way.
I never did build up a group here in Ohio like what I had when I was younger. I have friends here, a few really close ones, but mostly my heart is still scattered around the world. There’s something about those younger years and the kind of friendships you build then that is truly special and unique. Stephen King really leaned on this in both IT and The Body, although obviously the traumatic events of my youth were not inter-dimensional demons trying to kill me and my friends. Sociopaths with knives, sure, but no weird monster-clown shit. But there’s one line from The Body, that fans of the film adaptation, Stand By Me, will definitely remember:
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, does anyone?”
Stephen King, “The Body”
What a gut punch that is, as I’m staring down my 47th birthday this month. Because it’s true, so incredibly true. The truest words ever written. We move through different places in life in such an insidious way because time always tricks us so we never know what we have until it’s gone. I touched base with Kyle last year and we talked about grown-up things because we’re grown-ups now. We talked about fatherhood and work and the world and life but there’s a huge gulf of years between us, years when we were apart, living our lives completely separately, becoming who we were going to be. There was reminiscing, sure, but it felt equally comforting and disappointing to only have this small period of time together to pull memories from. We left the conversation promising to “keep in touch”, both knowing it was unlikely to happen.
There have been more than a few times in my life that I felt bad about moving on from a group of friends. As my life changed, as I changed, it’s natural for some things to end but it took me a while to fully understand and appreciate that.
“…a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.”
Vision, “The Avengers: Age of Ultron”
I know it’s fashionable for white dudes of a certain age to quote comic book movies and think themselves profound, and I would almost apologize for that one if it wasn’t so fucking good. And true. I have always been a collector, an archivist, someone desperately clinging to every artifact of the past so that it doesn’t disappear. And as I’ve gotten older I’ve let go of some of those urges because now I’ve learned to see the beauty in letting something go.
Some of these friendships are gone, sure. Some are just hibernating. There’s that old joke, “There are friends who will help you move, and there are friends that will help you move a body” and I’m lucky in that I have a lot, and I mean a LOT of friends who would help me move a body. We don’t see each other much, don’t talk as often as we’d like, but every time we connect it’s solid and genuine and true.
But no, I don’t think I’ve ever had friends like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Beautiful ❤️