Mesh

The following is a transcript of a story I gave aloud at a school friend's Storytelling party about this time of year last year (2013). I'm told it won that night, and may have been recorded. The theme was "Mesh": First you all need some definitions:
Initialism - Is an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately

Such as DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome), or WWJD (Walla Walla Juvenile Detention! Is that not right? I guess the D could be for Delinquent).

Hagiography - The lives of the saints, saints lives. This is not a hagiography. Neither of us are

saints.

[Pause, searching page]

Crap… there was a third one, but I guess I forgot to write it in. Huh… well, anyway…

It was October 25th... I had had a HUGE crush on this guy… in fourth grade but by our freshman year it was a different story. You see, more recently I was working at the wheel when a school was holding a homecoming dance at the Aquarium.  I was reminded of the only year I attended homecoming watching him walk into the gym with his drop dead gorgeous date on his arm. She was a fucking airhead without an ounce of common sense. But I only say she lacked "common sense" because it just happens that she was simultaneously a goddamn genius. She was our age but skipped to the grade ahead of us, was in the gifted programs and Advanced Placement. Ingrained in my memory is the image of them walking in, he and I made eye contact, he smiled and waved and I weakly smiled in response before turning back to talk to make an awkward Freshman attempt at flirting with a guy in my group.

To be sure, if you were to look at a photo of the 500 some odd members of the Freshman class of Walla Walla High School, a little more than say... 12 years ago you might suggest that that guy with matted, Cobain-esque hair and that girl without any hair were not really intending to fit at all. Though we were both well known as athletes we were definitely not of the “Jock” stereotype. During orientation, when they held that class meeting trying to discourage dropping out of school we were probably the two they were referring to when they said that someone next to us probably wouldn’t make it to graduation. Personally, I gave a commencement speech but based on my GPA I wasn’t exactly sure I was actually graduating. My speech, was called “It’s all in the way we see it”. Most importantly though, you need to know he and I, Mr. Cobain hair that is, were NOT friends.

I don’t know, I mean, like I said I met him in the 4th grade and I had a huge crush on him, it was just after my soccer days when my Jersey number was 22. Even so, by the end of 8th grade, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was better than him. Mostly cause my mom would tell me about conversations she’d had with his mom… the vice principal of my middle school… we’ll just gloss over the fact that my mom was semi-regularly meeting with my middle school vice principal and did not actually know her in any other context.

Anyway… He always seemed out of it, he was really popular but instead of actually hanging out with that crowd he hung out with a big group of really weird, kinda sketchy people.

He licked lizards in Costa Rica, there were pictures, that happened. He also licked my friend Sarah’s arms during PE, semi-frequently. Sarah would refer to him as her girlfriend, the word “boyfriend” was only used to emphasize what he was not. At one point, when he didn’t feel like living at home he also camped out in Sarah’s back yard. How much his or Sarah’s parents knew about that I am not actually sure.

One day at lunch during 7th grade WASL testing Sarah and I were in the courtyard during 8th grade lunch. He and I were 7th graders, Sarah was in 8th, but I was in a 'gifted' class with Sarah called Explorers that meant I spent lunch, and most of my time, with the year ahead of me.  On this particular day Sarah insisted that we hang out at a particular spot outside this one science classroom and apparently right on que guess who came flying out, having answered “C” to every question on the test before leaping through a classroom window?

The following summer I visited Ireland for the first time, the whole trip I did a really good job of continuing to be one of the kids that was just outside the norm. My roommate one night tattled on me for sneaking into a friend’s room. I found a payphone and called my mom back in the states before our leaders could and told her the situation. Mom told me she wouldn’t want to share a room with that girl either. On this trip they collected our passports for safe keeping and numbered them, we used the same numbers to do a count off when they wanted to make sure they had everyone, I was number 22. That was the same summer he had his first trip abroad, you know… licking lizards.

Now, I talked a pretty big game about not caring what others thought of me, but he seemed to genuinely not give a shit.

By fall of our Freshman year of high school I was awash in what I now consider to be a jealousy firmly entrenched behind a real ugly mask of self-righteous indignation.

I mean, I made a fair effort: That year I had completely shaved my head, and though it was for a good reason I had no real interest in telling anyone why, I was a little more interested in the social experiment of it.  At Freshman orientation my 2nd period science teacher had everyone going around the room saying their names and when it was my turn he nodded to me and said “Sir?” naturally I didn’t realize he was speaking to me and so the girl behind me had to speak up and say “That’s Maggie!” Considering he was a perverted bastard it was actually more comfortable in his class to be thought to be male, although definitely detrimental to one’s GPA. In the spring, after my hair had grown and I even went to the school Morp (prom backwards) as Marilyn Monroe, Mr Douche was explaining to the class how he would grade a particular assignment and then, attempting to make a joke, announced “Except Parker over here! Cause I don’t like her!” without even thinking I immediately shot back “It’s all right! The feeling is mutual!” The class roared, and I wondered if anyone else noticed the momentary anger that flashed across his face.  Looking back at my grades, we’re still not actually sure how, but I failed Pre-AP Freshman Science that semester, nearly impossible for a girl.

Of course, that was Spring term, and I’m trying to tell you about fall. You see this guy, the one I was so much better than, he would hang out with his friends before and after 2nd period at the corner of the science building and I had to walk by him before and after Mr. Douche’s class. Nearly every single morning he would say hi to me as I passed by. Most mornings I, in my weird judgemental attitude, would ignore him, at least pretend I didn’t hear him, and I would definitely not make eye contact. This spot, overlooked the courtyard of our school, so it's where the podium is placed at graduation.

On October 25th 2001 five days after his 15th birthday he was standing on that corner wearing a football jersey and he said “hi” to me. I probably ignored him.  That night there was a Freshman football game, hence he was in his jersey. I was on the varsity Cross Country team and I was probably carbo-loading for regionals at a spaghetti dinner, we had all been in uniform all day too. We left really early the next morning for Spokane.

Friday or Saturday night we had dinner at Dominoes and someone mentioned they heard he got injured at the game. The guy who licks strange lizards, jumps out windows and sleeps in Sarah’s backyard. He's spent plenty of time in a cast, it's not really news. The subject was changed because Chad was absolutely incensed our coaches wouldn’t take him and Brandon to Hooters.

Monday morning rolled around and as I walked by myself from PE to Science, my daily lizard licking, window jumping greeter wasn’t there, he wasn’t there after class either. I hadn’t given him any thought over the weekend, but I noticed his absence. And no one said “hi” to me that day. I remember someone mentioning he was in the hospital, see he actually passed out at the game, a helmet to helmet could have been bad but this was a helmet to thigh-pad hit. He went in for another play and was pulled from the game when he told the coach he felt dizzy. All this being the case it was rough so we shouldn’t expect him back too soon anyway. After coming out of that you gotta have recovery time. In the mean time the gear was inspected and there was no equipment failure, it did its job.

So Tuesday morning October 30th, as expected, he still wasn’t there. You should know that I’m a very optimistic person. I generally cloud that in a whole lot of sarcasm, cynicism, and general curmudgeonliness but I really do, almost always, genuinely believe everything is going to be okay, it might not be exactly what I think “okay” is supposed to look like, but everything is going to be fine. It just happens that that day, realizing he wasn’t there even though I knew he wouldn’t be, I just knew.  When we arrived in our third period class our teachers had an official statement waiting to be read.

Everybody said he’s in the hospital, did anyone mention the ICU? I guess that was a given, I did hear he was in a coma.

“Essentially,” our local paper reported later, “he had a stroke.”

Oh! That was the definition I forgot!

Subdural Hematoma - Bleeding of the brain usually brought about by high velocity impact fatal in

60-80% of cases. That’s not what a helmet to thighpad hit is supposed to be but that’s what caused it. THAT is how a barely 15 year old boy dies of a stroke.

Now, I might have noticed him being more of an asshole if I hadn’t been such a big one myself. I did say this was not a hagiography but on the other hand, I'm a liturgical protestant, and when we celebrate All Saints Day as we recently did, it would ONLY be appropriate to call us both saints. So maybe this isn't a hagiography, but then I always think of this story when I light a candle this time of year.

Because a month and a half after that homecoming dance I was in the small gym again standing where he had been, looking at his homecoming photo hanging on the wall at his memorial service. A gorgeous homecoming date simultaneously airhead and genius, maybe theres the answer to hagiography. He and I were a couple of weird and wonderful teenagers, simultaneously sinners and saints. About three and a half years later I stood at a podium to give my speech in the same spot he always greeted me, I stepped up just after our friend ASB President held a moment of silence to remind us that we in fact did not all make it and this one guy was “friend to all, enemy to none.” Well, we really weren’t enemies, but I’m still not sure we were friends. I guess it’s “All in the way we see it”.

WWJD stands for Walla Walla Juvenile Delinquent, but JQ22 are the four digits I need to be reminded of when I’m being an asshole. So naturally they can probably be used interchangeably.

The last time I saw him, the last time he said ‘hi’ to me I wore my cross country jersey and John Q wore a football jersey, number 22, they were both made of mesh.