Aberrant Apparent

Ode to a Friend Never Forgotten

I can’t recall when or where you and I first met, whether we were clowning in class, hanging around the halls or loitering at lunchtime. The two of us took to each other and made each other laugh. Our escapades, shenanigans and misadventures made us high; we had no need for booze or dope. We only had comedy, never tragedy.

The author of a history of Archie comic books mused their undying popularity was because those in high school believed it lasted forever…there were no tomorrows…

I do recall one tomorrow in our school days together…We skipped school on a Friday afternoon to see the latest John Wayne movie. Thinking ourselves sly, we entered the cinema during the film programme but before the feature started. During the darkness of the coming attraction trailers we moved into the middle row, but we bumped into someone, then another…the image on the big screen changed to brightness revealing the entire cinema was packed with besuited businessmen wagging work! We took our seats together, looked at each other, laughed and simultaneously said,

‘They’re playin’ hooky too!’

That day to me was our tomorrow, forever dodging work together for Friday afternoon movies.

Perhaps because you weren’t a good student or probably because you wouldn’t take crap from teachers, they held you back by flunking you. I had another year to enjoy your company. Then came graduation and my army enlistment…we went our separate ways as you wouldn’t or couldn’t [?] write.

We reunited when I returned from overseas. You were still there, laughing and living it up as always. Together again, we swapped jokes and funny stories at café counters, restaurant tables, pinball parlours, miniature golfing, bowling and just sitting in cars. Wise cracks, fast snacks, we made tracks to carnivals together with your Fulton Street gang you remained friends with since childhood whilst my neighbourhood Chestnut Street gang vanished long ago. Some of them are with you now.

There weren’t only laughs, you gave me the life I never had in high school; dating, going to dances, and driving in circles through our dead downtown long after scooping the loop had ended due to the Oil Crisis.

I was grateful, but…

I couldn’t explain to you that doing the wonderful things I should have done in school embarrassed me now. I felt odd, I later realised ‘grown up’ was the word, after having been away. You still lived for the day in the way we always did.

You invited me to stay the night in your Sunset Avenue apartment as the next morning you drove me to my interview with the civil service. I’ll never forget the look you gave me when I was dressed in a three-piece suit for the interview whilst you were still in schoolboy jeans. I instantly knew there’d be no ditching work together for Friday afternoon action movies…

Tragedy caught up with us as it does to everyone. Your wonderful mother died, then you had an automobile accident that left you physically and mentally changed and challenged. I was glad to be with you in those sad times.

After I began college on the G.I. Bill, you left town, making your way through the U.S.A.. Were you my Puff the Magic Dragon, looking for a new friend who hadn’t ‘grown up’? Or was my first ex-girlfriend right in proclaiming in her Declaration of Independence that I had grown boring. Was holding a steady job just as repulsive to you as studying or soldiering? In America’s educational apartheid, not embracing the former was fatal. The ultimate revenge of the manly-man-hating faculty was relegating you to the untouchable caste of the living dead…

I’d lost touch with you before I departed to make my way through the world.

I also can’t recall how I learned about your demise a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away from our hometown. As I’m grief intolerant, I only remembered the fun times we had.

Our 50th high school ‘reunion’ came and went…Neither of us were there, but you’ll always be in my funhouse of memories.

Rather than ‘what if’, it’s ‘remember when’, and the laughs begin again…

FIN

Recommend Write a Review Report