The things that cross your mind.

It's funny how sometimes things never cross your mind, and then (like lately) it is like a whole bag of memories found you all over again.

Here goes. Things I never write about.

The events of twenty years ago seem like more than a distant memory. Sometimes I wonder if they happened at all. Then again, I don't like to think about those things because after all of this time I still feel and ache and I still miss him.

Steve was the coolest dude in school, and by default I got to be cool for just being friends with him. What made him cool? Probably because he learned his coolness from his two older brothers. That is what I always chalked it up to. In 80s fashion he wore his sunglasses inside, spiked his hair in strizzle fashion, and just reeked of coolness. I often wonder what the hell he would have turned into. More so, I wonder what kind of friends we would have been later on.

So what brought him up tonight . . . flipping through the channels I heard the opening chords to "How Can We Dance When Our Beds Are Burning," and I sat and listened to the entire song. Funny, a song I rarely hear I still know on opening chords. The story comes from a sixth grade music assignment where we had to sing a song. He sang that, and while singing the song we stared at each other. I think we knew then that there was something amiss with us. We weren't just friends, like we proclaimed, and everyone else argued against. We got kicked out of class together, laughed together, drove teachers to the brink of insanity, and made a general ruckus of ourselves. Good times, indeed.

None-the-less, Steve got fussed at for song selection (we were at a religious school after all), and I haven't the foggiest as to what I sang. I am willing to bet the others from that class don't either. Why do I remember that song so damned much? Maybe because it was a joke between us that he always sang parts of it to me, that we busted out in chorus in math class singing it (yup, hall visit that one brought), and we were outcasts yet cool because of our oddities. The funny thing is is that we loved getting kicked out together, something our teachers never really grasped. I honestly don't really recall what we carried on about to get kicked out so much, or what we conversed about in the hallway, but I do know that Steve remains my primary memory of those formative years. I can still tell you the first time I saw him and the last time I saw him.

I bet those same teachers would have outright coronaries if they knew what I do now. I bet they would scathe and foam at the mouth to know I've been published on the regular schedule of my life. I bet they would rethink parts of their careers if they knew that what I really recall is not the Daily Devotional, the asexual relations of plants, the divisions of decimals, or the "proper use of color" in art. Yea, let's not go there.

Heh.

Somethings from the past

Here's something I never really write about. Tonight I'm feeling . . . not nostalgic, but that is the closest word I can get.

In 1989 a friend of mine died in a car accident. It was December, and as story books would have it it was a cold, snowy, and icy night. Steve died that day, and I will never deny the fact that not only did I take that hard but damned hard. This year makes twenty years, and I can't say that he's haunted my mind everyday for two decades. Though, I most certainly have thought about him through the years.

Odd things about it . . . when girls turn into women and realize they are in their 30s the conversation almost always turns toward that first love, and the first love is almost always of the middle school variety. We giggle about doodles in notebooks, phone calls, first kisses, and that first gift. I got my first gift from Steve, which about two people know that fact, and sadly he died the next day. I didn't find it in my locker until a month later. Yea, Steve died right before the holiday, and it was left in a set of lockers that we rarely used. When I found it I remember thinking that it was like a voice from the grave. Sometimes, I do still think that. It was nothing more than a small teddy bear with a Santa's hat, about the size of my hand in total, but it certainly makes for a great first gift.

I still have that thing, packed away in my Christmas stuff, sometimes I pull it out, and I rarely make mention of where it is from. Usually, I tell people it was an unsigned gift in the seventh grade--true--but I don't tell anyone that the handwriting on the tag was clear as day Steve's. I don't tell them that I sat that January night in my room looking at that stuffed bear with tears falling. I don't tell them that sometimes, sometimes, my memories creep up on me and take me back twenty years to adolescent angst, acne, and big 80s hair to see Steve running up to me yelling "Hey, Hey . . . I've got a joke for you."