Blogger's Note: Amy is that person that you've always known. She was born just mere days from me. Our mothers share stories of their times in the hospital together.
She was my girlfriend from Kindergarten through the Sixth Grade. I had a pretty committed relationship with her. She moved to Joliet, IL for three of those years. We maintained correspondence through well-crafted stationary by volleying letters regularly. I had written some rather endearing post-scripts that included such works as "I love you more and more than anybody."
We split paths for two years.
In high school, we became re-acquainted. This time as friends. Oh, and Competitive Humorous Duet Acting Teammates (yeah, you heard it right here, bitches!) And through high school our friendship would endure. After graduation, when many classmates were ensorcelled by the lure of a giant party, we took a detour among a smaller camaraderie to celebrate.
I was an usher in her wedding later. Feeling the responsibility and the charm was refreshingly pleasant during a candidly bothersome time I was going through.
And beyond, when we found each other and stayed in touch despite the obstacles and the distances.
And, so tonight we meet. A short bit of communion, with many beers and many stories. And we did the best we could with the time we had.
We never missed a beat. Not a one. And that is such a rare jewel. To know that despite any of the practical variables that apply in a given relationship between any two people, two constants remain. And while there may be present a part of that person that is strange and unfamiliar; there also exists another part. Equal in every measure save that it is filled with used toys and memories half-broken and a child's play at love. And should we meet again, we recognize only the latter. And we repair memories.
And so I have described my night. Fair as it was to compose some writing inspired.
I love mazes. I always have. As a child, I loved to try to solve them; I loved to make them; and, I dreamed that someday I would actually be able to navigate a real one. They were so beautifully linear and random at the same time. If done properly, anyone had an equal chance to successfully maneuver through a maze. As I saw it, to do a maze properly, one finds the Starting point and then travels until there's a directional choice to be made. Then, he or she randomly chooses a direction (without cheating and looking ahead) and continues in this manner until the Exit is found.
Mrs. Donaldson had just finished teaching us how to make Z's in cursive. She told us to write two rows of them and then sit quietly until everyone had finished. I did mine as quickly as I could and then went back to work on the maze I had been drawing. This one was gonna be good!
I put the finishing touches on it and surveyed my neighboring classmates for a good candidate to traverse my newest creation. Angie was sitting next to me; and, she, too, had finished her two rows of Z's.
"Here..." I whispered excitedly as I handed her the masterpiece and the instructions, "...go through this."
Angie put her pencil at the word Start and drew a straight line through the maze to the word Finish. She handed the paper back to me and said, "there... I went through it."
One important thing about mazes that I forgot to mention is that they're only good for one trip. Sure, pencil marks could be erased, but let's be serious. No line is ever really erased as if it never existed. The evidence of its existence, no matter how faded, is apparent if one looks hard enough.
I had spent at least ten minutes on that particular puzzle, and Angie had ruined it in two seconds.
Proud of her clever "solution", she was smiling from ear to ear. She opened her notebook and ripped a corner of paper from one of the sheets inside. Quickly, she wrote something on it. She handed the note to Belinda and motioned for Belinda to hand it to Heather.
Upon reading it, Heather looked over her shoulder at Angie, grinning. Angie squinted a bigger smile at Heather as if to say, 'isn't that funny??' Heather's cheeks dimpled as she beamed agreement and nodded as if to say, 'Yes! That is funny!!'
I stared at my irreparable work, red-faced and angry. I envied grown-ups. They lived in a world free of Angie's and Heather's! They could do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted to do it! I couldn't wait to grow up and not have to worry about anything. When I got my own place, I'd build a maze. A real maze. It would be a hundred miles long and take probably seven minutes to get through! Maybe even eight! Just for that, I wasn't going to talk to Angie or Heather during Lunch. Maybe even all of recess.
Brandon, wise to the fact that something interesting was going on, turned around to see what it was. Mrs. Donaldson chose that moment to resume class.
"Ok. Everyone finished? Now, turn your books to..."
"DAVID!!!" It was Joanne. She was sitting on the other side of the room. Unfortunately for her, David, always doing something he shouldn't, sat behind her. I looked up as Joanne was brushing something out of her hair, and David was snickering.
"David, stop it right now or you can go and sit in the back of class." Mrs. Donaldson didn't bother getting both sides of the story. She knew who the culprit was. Hell, we all did.
Before resuming, our teacher looked at the clock and paused. "Ok, we're running out of time. Everyone sit quietly until lunch time. And that means quietly David."
I stared out the window. Beyond the external hallway, an empty playground slept beneath an overcast, February sky. A wooden bench boxed in the seasoned oak tree that typically became my focal point when I got lost in a daydream. Through grimy windows, I watched chain swings gently sway against a cold, winter wind. Kamikaze acorns lie smashed and scattered across the asphalt.
Today was my birthday. I was seven now. I was getting older. After school this afternoon, all of my classmates were invited to my house for a birthday party that my mom was throwing me, and I couldn't wait. I was trying to come up with some ingenious plan to un-invite Angie and Heather when the lunch bell rang.
We jumped out of our seats and formed a single-file line at the door. Mrs. Donaldson led us across the street, which was protected from traffic by metal sawhorses while school was in session. We stood in the lunch line excited to be out of the weary classroom and prepared to make the most important decision of the entire day: white milk or chocolate?
During cold or rainy weather, recess was in the gym. Thunderous echoes of a thousand running feet reverberated from the wooden bleachers to the laminated floor. Shrill laughter and playful screams amplified by the acoustics impelled me to believe that silence would never resurface. Sometimes, when I had to walk through the gym while no one else was in there, I felt this spooky, unsettling feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Amy and I were singing our favorite song: "I Love a Rainy Night." I didn't know any of the verses, so we sang the chorus over and over. I think Amy knew the whole song, but since I didn't we just stuck with the chorus. She was cool like that.
Ginger ran up to join us. "Let's play Star Wars!" I suggested. "I'll be Luke Skywalker. Amy, you're Princess Leia and, Ginger, you're Princess Leia 2!"
We always assigned our parts even though, by now, we were seasoned veterans. I recall the first time that Ginger suggested being Princess Leia 2. I watched Amy's reaction with a sense of impending doom. Had someone offered to be Luke Skywalker 2, I would've responded with, "are you crazy!!! there's no such thing as Luke Skywalker 2!!!" But, Amy just shrugged and said ok. That was way back in the First Grade; and, by now, we had grown accustomed to the idea. Not to mention, having two Leia's gave me twice the princesses to save. I could live with that.
The bell signifying the end of recess rang, and we filtered out of the gym, across the street, and back to class.
The afternoon rolled along rather typically for a stretch of time. Mrs. Donaldson started teaching us how to read the hands on a clock when Joanne suddenly shouted out. "David!!! Stop!!! I mean it!!!"
We all turned to see what the trouble-maker was up to this time. Joanne was (once again) brushing something from her hair. David was snickering.
"Ok. That's it, David. To the back of the room. When you figure out how to act like a gentleman, you can join the rest of us." Mrs. Donaldson was this frail-looking, gray-haired lady; I pictured her baking cookies and reading fireside fairy tales. When she was mad, however, her face would distort, and her complexion would turn beet-red. I had felt her wrath myself on a few occasions; but, most of the time, her ire was focused toward David.
David, appearing unaffected by his current plight, grabbed his books and a package that was sitting under his chair and relocated to a lone desk that was resting in the back of the room. As he made the lonely walk through an aisle of classmates, I caught a glimpse of that package. I knew what it was, because I had one at home. It was a Stetson gift pack. It contained a bottle of baby powder, some lotion, and some Stetson cologne. I noticed that Mrs. Donaldson, perhaps in a moment of distraction, didn't confiscate the contraband. She would live to regret that oversight.
"Now, get out your math books and turn to page 119," Mrs. Donaldson instructed.
Suddenly, I perked up. I just remembered something.
When text books are assigned at the beginning of the year, sometimes, if you were lucky, you'd get one that had some "bonus" material inside. For example, sometimes at the bottom of the page, the book's previous owner might have written "turn to page 72"; and, if you went to page 72, you'd find another instruction like "turn to page 19"; and, if you went to page 19, you'd find another instruction like "turn to page 101"; and, so on, and so forth. If you followed the pattern long enough, eventually you'd get to some clever piece of script that might read, "CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE JUST COMPLETED A WILD GOOSE CHASE!!!" Or, if you were really lucky, you'd find some really juicy word like asshole or dipshit.
My Second Grade Math book was solid gold. Someone that had used it before me had come up with all kinds of fun things and all kinds of "interesting" words. One particular game was overwhelmingly fascinating. It was somewhat like a maze... but not. I thought it was an artistic work of sheer genius.
At the top of one of the pages, the word START had been written. From there, a line had been drawn. This line twisted and tangled between words and numbers, around the edges of the page, and twisted through paragraphs until, at last, it ended where the word FINISH had been written at the bottom. If I followed the line, ever-so-carefully, around its twirling knots and splendid corkscrews, I discovered that I could, indeed, trace it from START to FINISH.
Yesterday, Mrs. Donaldson handed out these arithmetic worksheets that we had to complete and turn in. They were simple addition and subtraction problems that I could do with my eyes closed. After droning through a couple of mundane problems, I decided that I would treat our hard-working teacher to a piece of masterful ingenuity that was so artfully crafted, that our loving educator would find it impossible to do anything less than praise her star pupil. I wrote START at the top and began drawing a line. Twirling through the problems, tangling through each number, and circling around the page, I finally wrote FINISH where the line ended. Now, I couldn't wait to get the paper back and see how pleased she had been with the fun game I had produced.
"On page 119, work on problems 1-17 while I hand out yesterday's worksheets, " Mrs. Donaldson instructed.
Expeditiously I put my pencil to paper and began solving the arithmetic problems. The room grew quiet as we focused on adding and subtracting. Fueled with excitement, I completed the problems with...
"DAVID!!!!!!!!!!!"
Mrs. Donaldson's piercing exclamation screeched through my daydream like a train whistle. Everyone looked up in unison to find our disheveled teacher running through the middle row of desks toward the back of the room. As though choreographed, our heads jerked to where David had been sitting.
But David wasn't there. At least I didn't think so at first. A large, white cloud had somehow taken up residence in the back of our classroom. It was so thick and impenetrable that the troublemaker had been shrouded from our view. Slowly, as the pearly dust began to dissipate, David began to reveal himself covered from head to toe in...
...baby powder! I suddenly realized what it was. That Stetson gift pack had indeed come back to haunt Mrs. Donaldson's Second Grade classroom.
David was smiling from ear-to-ear. I couldn't believe it! That kid was about to be in so much trouble; and, yet, he was smiling! That kid had gall. I'd give him that.
Mrs. Donaldson grabbed David by his upper arm and led him down the aisle of desks toward the door; a dust cloud of baby powder trailed behind him. "Heather, hand out the graded papers on my desk," our teacher instructed as she led the coughing and hacking Baby Powder Bandit into the hall.
After the sounds of the struggling "delinquent" faded into quiet, Heather began handing out the papers. When the teacher was out of the class, we turned into a monstrous eruption of excitement. Kids began to turn in their seats to speak with their neighboring classmates or launch paper airplanes into flight.
I was just about to tap Brandon on the shoulder and comment on the preposterous event when Heather laid in front of me the graded math worksheet from yesterday. At the top, standing out like an angry priest, was a big, red 'F'.
My heart dropped. I struggled to breath. I looked closely at the work I had done, unsure how I could have done so poorly on something so simple. Apparently, I had been so caught up in making the perfect "Follow This Line" game that I had forgotten to do the math problems. I stared at the paper in disbelief.
I was sick with humility and disgust at my mistake. I had never gotten an 'F' before. I wanted to wad the paper up; I wanted to crawl into a ball and disappear. Never mind the fact that I had enough 'A's in this subject that this one 'F' didn't really matter to my average. I had an 'F'.
I couldn't control my lips anymore. They quivered and puckered. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I was trapped at school amid everyone.
Brandon, sensing something was wrong, turned around. His eyes widened when he saw what I was upset about, but he didn't say anything. He appeared sympathetic. To my right, Angie, too, seemed to understand my distress. Feeling certain that she was going to jab me with something sarcastic, I dramatically turned my paper over and slammed it on my desk. No one said anything though. I laid my head on my desk and hid my face as best I could.
After a few silent moments, Angie finally spoke. "I know something that will cheer you up."
Why was she talking to me? She ruined my maze. What did she care?
"My uncle was washing his hair in the shower when his water got turned off. He still had shampoo in his hair and no way to wash it out," Angie shared.
My sniffles stumbled as I coughed something that was somewhere in the middle of a cry and a laugh. Brandon, Heather, and Belinda were outright laughing. I peeked out for a quick glance to find Angie encouraging me to smile with her expression. I quickly recovered and ducked my face into my arms again. I didn't want to smile. But that was funny...
I mean, I could picture this man with a lathered wig of shampoo riding up the escalator at JCPenny's. Or maybe riding the Tilt-a-Whirl at Noble Park. Or while browsing through a magazine at Readmore's. You couldn't just walk up to a stranger's house and rinse shampoo from your hair, could you? I mean, you'd just be stuck with it! That was so frustratingly funny.
Suddenly I couldn't hold it any longer. I laughed. And once you get to that point, when frowning just isn't possible anymore, you sort of just give up. I raised my head and wiped the tears from my cheeks.
"What did he do?" I finally asked her. Angie just shrugged. Either she didn't know, or she was content that we were so intrigued that she didn't want to ruin the mystery.
Suddenly, the final bell rang. It surprised us amid all the chaos, so we scrambled to find our book bags and coats.
"See you in a little while, Duane." "You're going to like what I got you." "It's at 4 o'clock, right?" My classmates were aflutter with excitement, and I industriously tried to address each of them.
Mom was parked outside, ready to drive me home. My brother, three years younger than me, was standing in the back seat, anxious for the excitement that a birthday party would be bringing to our house. I told them about my day at school on our drive home, minus the 'F' of course.
When 4 o'clock rolled around, the kids started showing up. They all brought presents; I couldn't believe the jackpot of gifts that were piling on the kitchen table. Mom handed out pizza, and we all talked about important things like "The Superfriends" and "The Dukes of Hazard" and "BJ and the Bear".
Finally, Mom brought out the birthday cake. It was R2-freakin'-D2!!! My favorite droid had just been re-created out of cake and icing. Seven candles flickered softly as Mom sat it in front of me. All of my friends started singing "Happy Birthday" to me.
"Make a wish and blow 'em out!!!" My cousin Vickie shouted.
I closed my eyes and wished. And I wished for something really great. And I knew the rule about not telling anyone, so I never did.
Mom, holding a knife, started removing the spent candles from the blue and white droid. I felt my heart drop. I looked around to see if anyone else shared my anxiety. Mom was about to cut into the greatest work of art since the Mona Lisa. Didn't anyone care?
Shawn, my brother, was sitting on the table so that he could see over all the "big" kids. He shared a look with me, aware of his brother's concern. As Mom raised a knife, preparing to cut into R2's left leg, Martin shouted from somewhere, "Ooooh! I want that piece!!" Damn him! And, like that, Mom amputated R2's leg. *sniffle*
"OK, now open your presents!!!" Ginger, rambunctious as ever, shouted. My friends circled around me as I started ripping and tearing at the colorful wrapping paper. I opened the cards that were attached to each gift. Superman, C3PO, Buck Rogers, and Bugs Bunny took turns wishing me the "Greatest Birthday Ever." And their wishes worked.
I got a Criss Cross Crash which was a Hot Wheels track designed so that your favorite die-cast cars would "crash" wonderfully into each other at break-neck speed. Heather got me the game "Cooties" which was great because I had seen it on the shelf at K-Mart, and I always wondered what it was. It looked like a toy insect, but I knew that it was some kind of board game. How could a plastic bug be a game? I would find out tonight!
The next present was Darth Vader's head! "Look Mom!" I shouted for my mother ,who was busy cleaning the kitchen, to look at this.
"Yeah... that's great.." but she didn't look.
"Look Mom! It's Darth Vader's head!" I encouraged.
"Open it," Amy suggested from somewhere in the crowd of kids. Inquisitively, I opened evil, Lord Vader's head, and... oh my goodness! It was a carrying case for my Star Wars action figures designed to look like Darth Vader's head. I jumped up and down. Even my brother's eyes opened wider in awe.
"Look Mom! I can put my Star Wars figures in here. Look Mom!!!" Mom casually looked up. "Wow. That's great," she tried to sound enthused. Whatever, I was moving on...
I got a Rubick's Cube and a Lite Brite thing and a Stretch Armstrong and an Etch-a-Sketch and Hungry, Hungry Hippo (I was going make my Hippo eat sooo many marbles!) Angie had gotten me this cool Magic Marker set, so I decided I would let her off the hook for now. And somebody had even gotten me the Kraken from Clash of the Titans!
And, so it went. My seventh birthday faded into memory that night. Mom had to carry me to bed, because I had fallen asleep between Darth Vader and Stretch Armstrong. I'm pretty sure I smiled all night long.
Funny, isn't it? The simple lessons are the toughest to learn. My friends have been helping me learn them even way back then.
Angie taught me not to take things so seriously. David taught me that, even when you're covered in it, don't quit smiling. And Amy? Amy taught me to make room for anyone that wants to join in at funtime. If you sing the parts that everyone knows, then everyone can sing and smile.
Time moves differently for the young. As children, we would take a moment like a borrowed toy and play with it and learn from it and then return it with gratitude. Every day was an adventure, a discovery, a new friend, a new game. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to my Second Grade classroom and wave my arm and say, "Pick me! Pick me! I get it now!" But I guess we all get it now.
So I look instead to the future. To a seventy-year old Duane who travels back in time to see forty-year old Duane. To smile and grin at all the silly things I do everyday. At all the nonsense that I worry about for no good reason. And I write this with my seventy-year old self looking over my shoulder patting me and chuckling and saying, "these are the simple lessons. You learned them way back then. And they are still true today. Take them out and dust them off. And smile, you fool."
-- if you'd like to read another Flashback episode, then check out "A Series of Unfortunate Events"
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