(Weakened)

Just driving along by myself today and found myself feeling old while enjoying Queen's "Another one Bites the Dust" (for the record, I have a mental block on whether to italicize or put parenthesis around books. movies, song, etc. and can't muster the energy to look it up every time, so just live with it and think what you want...just realize that the power is knowing that you can look it up but choosing not to). First I felt a little nerdy about liking it, then remembered how cool that song was when it came out--I think I must have been in 3rd grade or something. Now I feel somewhat drawn to that song because, in an undesrcibable, disjointed sort of way incorporating blood relatives and their gay lovers and ex-lovers, we are "related" to Freddie Mercury. Just so you know.

Ryan's all-important baseball stats for the weekend:

2 for 3 with 4 RBI's. In the 2nd inning, he grounded into a fielder's choice down the first base line into the outfield which scored 2 runs, then hit 2 1-RBI singles. And he played catcher...



In other family sports news: I birdied the 6th hole at Stewart's Peninsula by hitting a 160-yard tee shot which rolled 5 feet right of the cup, pin-high. Then I sank the putt. Aren't you impressed? I managed to shoot a par, a birdie, and 2 bogeys and still shoot 50 for 9 holes. For all non-golfers, that means that I totally lucked out on about half the holes, and completely sucked during the rest of the round.

Something this weekend made me think about an old friend from my senior year in high school named Jackie. He was tall, not fat but not lean, with shaggy straight blond hair and light blue eyes. He had the weirdest smile, but he was always smiling. It looked like someone had sharpened his teeth into fangs--I can't remember, he may have had braces or something, but when I think of Jackie, he's always smiling that big, wicked smile. Sometimes, I change the names of people in my stories (I've read 5 books on writing in the past 3 months, and they all recommend that you completely avoid identifying people), but this guy's name really was Jackie. He could have been homeless-I never knew where he lived, or anything about his parents or anything, and he wore the most bizarre clothes--huge, loose pants when they weren't stylish, and cool colors and vintage t-shirts. When I see the movie "Harold and Maude" (see, I'm doing it again--my default parenthesis), Maude makes me think of Jackie--He seemed like a combination of a completely crazy, unpredictable fruitcake and a self-confident "old soul", who was so self-assured that he would just do whatever kooky thing came into his brain. I was a little scared of Jackie.

There's the security guard's golf cart: Jackie wants to take it for a spin. We're doing a physics experiment. Jackie's idea? Let's add fire to the equation--wouldn't that be cool?... A song comes into his head? Jackie sings it at the top of his lungs for everyone.

Somehow we got together during lunch to hang out while we were in physics class together--it was an eye-opening thing to see someone so independent--almost like an adult, and he made me laugh my ass off. He had a pure heart. He also had the worst car I've ever seen--anywhere, anytime (The B-52's song "Love Shack" reminds me of Jackie's car: "I've got me a Chrysler, it's as big as a whale..."). No idea what model it really was, but I think originally it was supposed to be blue before all the paint came off -- it was so freakin' huge! I am absolutely convinced that it didn't fit completely between the white stripes on the road.

Then there was the day we were late back from lunch--Jackie hears Echo and the Bunnymen's "Lips like Sugar" and reaches over to crank it up with one hand, and steers with the other. He screams out "Hang On! We're going over!" and hits the gas, launching us across 3 lanes of traffic, over the median, ahead of oncoming traffic from the other direction, violently scraping the raised concrete and bouncing us down the road for the next minute or so due to the worn-out shocks and the massive size of the car. We laughed incredibly hard--that painful, gut-wrenching laugh that leaves you out of breath and sore. Our faces were red when we got back to class, leaving the teacher very suspicious of what we were up to.

Jackie also busted me on my shyness one time--I was in pain over a girl in our infamous physics class, and even wrote some poems about her. One day, Jackie turned around and told me "You know, I think we all have a little crush on Susan, but not like you." Although him saying it was a little annoying and ill-timed (because I was sensitive to it, and I felt like he said it a little too loud and within earshot of her) his smile wasn't quite so wicked--more like encouraging. It's good to have honest friends like that that challenge you.

We graduated, and he vanished like so many other high school friends. But Jackie's name never showed up on any of the alumni lists, and, even though I knew he was there, his picture or name never appeared in the yearbook. Like he never existed.

He still makes me smile, and sometimes even laugh out loud.

Maybe he was an angel.

I'm not looking too hard for him, because I like to think that he was.