When I was the same age my boy is now, ten (and in the fifth grade), my best friend in the neighborhood was just two doors down. DR was a year or so younger than me, and had 3 older siblings (that I can remember), just like me. I can remember still feeling like a kid back then (and now, too), but I felt like I was more than a year ahead of him. Regardless, we were always doing stuff together.
His mom would take us all in the van and go swimming at Diamond Lakes. I can still remember the jackass on the radio wearing out the “turn so you don’t burn” phrase on the radio. I only partly enjoyed going because, like today, I couldn’t swim a single stroke. I wasn’t comfortable in water passed my chest, and stayed a great majority of the time on a float, or on the beach. In only got in the water to cool down, or to wash off my Cheetos-stained fingers. (There’s a non-swimmer bonus right there – no waiting thirty minutes after you eat to get in the water because you can’t get a tummy ache just standing.)
DR and I also used to hang out in the slim strip of land between his house and the fence. This strip was roughly twice the width of a mower, but never needed to be mowed because it was always powder dry dirt. Great stuff to be in when discussing the buying points between Hotwheels and Matchbox cars. I must admit, I was never much of a Hotwheels/Matchbox person. Oh, I liked to look at them, and collect them, but I was never much about the business of “Let’s drive over here and have an oil change before the *big* race.” Boring! These were the years of Speed Racer and Star Wars, and sorry, but for me, toy cars no longer held my imagination.
One year, just before fifth grade began (fourth for DR), we learned the news that his parents were building a new house. While he would still be going to the same school, we would no longer be neighbors. We were pretty bummed because due to the difference in age, we never saw each other in school more than just a wave-in-passing in the hallway.
As a sort of a last big hoorah, and as a way to bridge our friendship to the new location, his mother allowed him to invite me to a sleepover. Now, maybe I’m forgetting something, but until this point I don’t recall ever spending the night with another buddy. This was something new in the relationship to me, and I was nervous! Heck, I’d known these people all my life, but now I was nervous to be with them? But I went and stayed the night.
The new house was great. I can remember going over there early one evening and thinking how nice and big the new neighborhood was and for the first time realized how different things can be for people. My house had four kids, two adults and usually a pet and we were all living in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house with a small living room, no dining room…or basement or upstairs. Now, that’s not to say we were unhappy, because we were happy. But I never realized what we didn’t have until I saw it in DR’s new house.
The next morning his mom woke me up for breakfast. She was the kind of pretty blonde mom that you’d agree to do anything for just because she was pretty. Nodding, “Yes, I’ll go home right this minute even though I just got here 5 minutes ago and we have all these toys out you nice pretty lady DR’s mom.” Seems DR was in the bathroom or something and I came on down to the kitchen. (Down! To the kitchen! I never went DOWN to the kitchen in my LIFE! My WHOLE LIFE! Stairs, and, and, EVERYTHING!)
The table was already set, milk was in the glasses and I could smell…smell…SNIIIIIFFFFFFF…Mmmmm, PANCAKES! I love me some pancakes. She motioned me to my chair and I nodded and sat down dutifully as the pretty lady DR’s mom directed, even though I didn’t care for the chair she picked out. Without thinking, I reached for my milk and took a drink.
Awe, GAWD!! WHAT was that stuff!?! It was white like milk. It clung to the glass like milk. But it sure as hell didn’t TASTE like milk. Holy cow, man! I quickly sat my glass back down and rid myself of my ‘stache so as to not draw attention that I surely must have just accidently been served somebody’s Metamucil. I’d just, uh, let it sit there and prepared my “not thirsty” speech.
Meanwhile, pretty lady DR’s mom brought over my pancakes, with DR still oddly missing. Prolly a #2 I thought, and began to dig into the pancakes even though the syrup hadn’t been poured onto my pancakes yet. One big ole scoop on the fork and chomp! Awe, GAWD!! WHAT was that stuff?! I looked around like somebody was playing a big practical joke on me. Pretty lady DR’s mom was back at the stove already, making more of these “pancakes”, whatever they were. No DR in sight. No DR giggling behind a cabinet door, or anything. I grabbed my glass of milk, GULP!! Awe, GAWD!! Not again! I drank this “milk”, AGAIN!!
Well, I must have had my nose scrunched or something as I was peeling apart these two “pancakes” because pretty lady DR’s mom asked me what was the matter. I said, “Oh, er, um, I was just uh…looking for the syrup. Yeah! I was looking for the syrup.”
And that, my friends, is when the world turned silent, and upside down, all at once. You see, after all these years, TODAY was the day I would learn something about DR’s family. And straight from pretty lady DR’s mom’s mouth.
“Syrup? Oh, we don’t have any syrup. Is that how you eat your pancakes? With syrup? We always put peanut butter on ours.”
This had not had time to sink in, at all, as I looked around to realize that now DR had appeared from the Great Dooky Land Beyond. I gave him a “that’s a fine how-do-you-do look” when he offered, “Yeah, and that ‘s why I don’t eat them.”
Stunned. I was absolutely awestruck stunned. Here, my best friend, KNEW the score. KNEW how it was all going to go down (or, in this case, NOT go down) and he withheld! My Hotwheels, swimming, and Star Wars aficionado buddy was withholding information. Great.
Just then, DR looks up at his not-so-pretty lady mom and asked, “Can I have some cold milk for my cereal?”
CEREAL?! He’s got cereal?! I’ve got these cement cakes and he’s got…what, yes! He’s got Fruit Loops!! Gah!
That’s when he’s now aged and overwrought probably-wig-wearing mother actually put ice cubes in his cereal bowl…and he thanked her! That’s when she put ice cubes in my glass of “milk”.
My heart sank. My tummy sank. My heart and my tummy, both felt betrayed. What was this new house where apparently richy rich people do the strangest of things? Ice, in cereal? Peanut butter instead of syrup for pancakes? Am I even in the right house?
Mr. Funt, are you still filming?
Fast forward to my birthday, December 8th, 2008. I’m sitting at the best Chinese food joint in town, with my boy. Like I said above, he’s ten and just happens to be in the fifth grade of the school I was going to back in like 1979.
We’re waiting on my parents to show up when I hear a voice that sort of makes me focus in. Now, the boy and I are in a booth and our backs are the wall. The next booth is empty. But the one on the other side of that has a woman with her back to us, and I couldn’t see who is on the other side but assumed it was the guy whose voice I’d just heard.
I asked my son if he could see the guy, because it sounded like a friend of mine that we ran into a couple of weeks before. He said it was definitely not my friend. I was kind of surprised, because I’m pretty good at recognizing voices of people even if I haven’t seem them for a while.
Anyway, we were talking about something, and I heard that guy say something else. I was like, I have got to see his face, because I KNOW this person. But his girlfriend’s head was right in the way. But just at that moment, he leaned and turned just enough so I could now see his right eye.
I was thinking out loud, and said, “I think that’s DR…” And my son said, “The one who puts peanut butter on his pancakes?!” I was like, “What?! How..”
“Dad! You just told me that story like two weeks ago!”
He was right. I had. He was as disgusted as I was, and he didn’t have to even taste the “milk” or the “pancakes”.
About that time, my folks arrived and sat down and I told them of my theory and they were like, “How can you be sure?”
“I, uh, heard his voice and uh…saw his…uh…eye.” And then I realized how ridiculous that was, to recognize an eyeball from 29 years ago, or whatever it was, and just dismissed the whole idea.
Sporadically throughout dinner everyone at my table kept asking, “Well…aren’t you going to go talk to him?!” like he was my jilted lover or something and I suddenly became very self-conscious. “No, no, I don’t think so. Maybe if he passes by or something, but no I’m not going over there.”
A few minutes later and I overheard him say something about his “motorcycle” and I nearly choked on my Black Pepper Shrimp. I was like, “That IS him!” Again, the jilted lover creepiness swept over, and I saw him get up and put on his jacket and walk toward the door. I gulped down my shrimp and raised my hand.
Like a fricken nervous schoolgirl I yelped, “D…R…..?”, miserably as though I both did and didn’t want it to be him.
He stopped and turned with a “Yes…” and before adding the “may I help you?” that I expected to hear he asked, “Mr. Bloggerific…Himself!?!?”
In a mix of shocking disbelief and amazement I turned red and with brilliance and utmost tact …nodded my head slowly with an Elvis-like curled lip. I couldn’t even shake his hand correctly! I grabbed his right hand with my left hand in an awkward “we-don’t-shake-hands-like-you-dirty-Americans” and I felt my hand go all girly and limp.
There he was, DR. Decades had gone by since the Breakfast Incident as if I’d ripped open my skull, located some of my oldest memories, and snatched him from the powdered dust in the narrow strip between his house and the fence and placed him right in the aisle of the House of Canton. It was both cool and unnatural at the same time. I was outside of my body looking down on this table of four with a leather clad man standing next them. All of them looking on with great big Anime WTF eyes. Blinking. Blinking.
In an instance I was back in my body fumbling with the “Sooooo! How have you been?” Trying to remember if he was Hotwheels or Matchbox, and frankly, which one had I been.
We all spoke fondly about the old days for all of 6-7 minutes. I could see on his face that he felt the same “this is neat-o and all, but awkward and I’m ready to leave, RIGHT NOW”. I made another failed attempt at shaking his hand, with the correct hand this time, but we both knew that I’m just not a good handshaker. We both joked that we hoped it wouldn’t be another 20 years before we saw each other again, but after he left I pointed out to my table that it was closer to 30 years.
So long, DR! Long may you ride into the peanut-butter-pancake-sunset!
