And I knew he wasn't talking about Bobby Riddle. He was talking... about himself. Some heroes pass through your life and disappear in a flash. You get over it. But the good ones, the real ones, the ones who count - stay with you for the long haul. The thing is, after all these years, I couldn't tell you the score of that game. What I remember is... sitting in that diner, up late... being young... drinking coffee with the only real hero I ever knew. My Dad - Jack Arnold. Number one.
In March of nineteen-seventy-two, a lot of great things were happening. Events that would shape history, and alter the way we think. Still, among all that change, there was a common thread. One experience that united us all. Lunch. At twelve-oh-five PM every day... kids all over America piled in to high school cafeterias. Like lemmings to the meatloaf. You remember. The sights, the sounds... and that smell. That odd combination of wet trays, warm silverware, and pale green beans. But lunch at my school, like most others... was rarely about food. It was about drama... lust... power... intrigue. Not to mention... humiliation. In a way, it was kind of a stage. And we... its principle players. There were those who could never seem to find a place to sit... and those no one wanted to sit with. Those with natural charm... and those who had to work for it. Me... I was just an ordinary Joe... being served something unidentifiable by a guy in a hair-net. Stocking up on waxy milk... and congealed blue-plate special. Yeah. All in all... life was good.
And, there ya had it. Lunch. Where romances bloomed and died... and returned again. Like last weeks leftover tuna casserole. Where the fondest dreams and aspirations of young adults reached their zenith... and the quest for knowledge became its own reward. Sure... maybe all those dramas played out over lunch weren't really dramas after all. Still looking back... they sure seemed that way.
If there's one thing every kid needs growing up, it's a best friend. Someone you trust. Someone who trusts you. Someone you measure yourself against. You go through everything together. Important things. Stupid things. Things that matter. Things that don't.
It was the first time I ever realized how truly perilous love could be. And I guess at that moment it was clear. Some things never change. After all, Paul was Paul. And no matter what, the guy... needed... me. Growing up is complicated. Kind of a race against time. A search for identity. For love. And the outcome's always in doubt. Things happen fast. Sometimes too fast. But that night, with Paul... I knew one thing. We'd been through everything together. And from here on out... no matter what... we were gonna need each other... more than ever.
Genetics. The heartbeat of heredity... the lynch-pin of the family. Parents supply their children with the same basic building blocks. The same blood types. The same involuntary responses. The same essential gene-pool. Yet, despite all this potential for similarity... sometimes things get confused. Sometimes, Mother Nature, in all her wry sense of humor... goes off and creates... total and complete opposites. Like me and my brother, Wayne. It was hard to believe we ever occupied the same womb. The only thing we had in common... was our complete and utter contempt for one another. All in all... my brother and I were just two different branches on the family tree. Me, the good branch... Wayne... the dead-end.
The thing is... I was prepared for the yelling, screaming, the gnashing of teeth. But what I wasn't prepared for was... the complete and utter silence. Well, maybe this was justice. A pay-back for all the times I'd laughed at Wayne when he got in trouble. In any case... there was no way out. Course, he should have told. It was the moment he had been waiting for... his whole life. But he didn't. I'm not sure why he didn't. Maybe he saw it was futile to try to explain. Maybe he knew how much harder my parents would be on me... than on him. Or maybe he forgot, and though he really did it. Or just maybe... for that one afternoon... my brother saw in me, a little bit of himself. Growing up brothers is kind of a mixed bag. Strangers. Warriors. Enemies. Idiots. Friends. One day you fight to the death. The next... you'd lay down your lives for each other. I never did say "thanks" to Wayne for what he did. But I washed his Corvair. And waxed it, too. I figured, hey - any guy who did that... deserved a shiny car.
It always seemed that in my house, the most dramatic things happened in the middle of the night. Like the night of the big blizzard when Dad got stuck out on the highway... and we thought we'd never see him again. Or the night my brother swallowed a whole bag of marbles... and threw them up in the car, on the way to the hospital. Or the night my eight-legged science project escaped... and turned up in Mom's nightgown at three AM. But nothing ever created quite as much confusion around my house... as the night my sister came back home.
Like I said... anything really important that happened at my house... happened in the middle of the night. In a way, it was a relief to all of us. We weren't really good at things like... romance. We were better at marbles, and eight-legged science projects. Ten days later... Karen asked Michael to marry her. And he accepted.
In nineteen-seventy-two, the "me" decade was dawning. And people everywhere were doing their own thing. Letting it all hang out. And setting out to find themselves. The world was changing. And my family was right in the middle of it.
The next morning, I watched my sister get married... and welcomed a new brother into my family. I watched my mother send her firstborn child out into the world. And felt her sorrow. I watched my father give away his only girl... to a stranger he hardly knew. I said goodbye, myself. Looking back, maybe it all seems a little silly. But being there, in those passing moments, I saw that something real and important was happening. Not just for Michael and Karen, but for all of us... in our small and fragile, almost-insignificant suburban family. After all, those were passionate times, when children were pioneers... on the road to find out, wherever that road might take them. When brothers and sisters, looking back... wished they'd known each other better. And parents, filled with love and despair, held on to the past... and kept a quiet vigil, for the future.
When I was growing up, summer vacations meant one thing - fun. Two solid months of goofing off, hanging out, and sleeping late. June, July and August were a time when anything was possible, when the hardships of school were over, and the promise of great times lay ahead. As for me that summer of nineteen-seventy-two, I was sixteen. Still young enough to bask in the pleasures of summer. The real delights... the harbingers of doom. It was grim. Within hours of his graduation, my brother had been Shanghai'd by the American workforce. Not that I wasn't sympathetic. Still, it was about time the Wayner got a taste of the old Puritan work ethic. I mean after all, this was Wayne's problem, not mine. Until of course, it was. Oh, God. Here they came. Those two words which meant death to summer fun.
By the time you've made it to age sixteen, you pretty much know all there is to know. About history, philosophy - the world. About life. There was virtually no situation you can't handle. Yeah, you're on top of your game - the pinnacle of poise, the essence of cool. No doubt about it - from the right thing to wear, to the right place to sit, to the right person to sit with. At sixteen, you pretty much learned it all. Well, almost all. OK. So there's one subject you're just as dumb about as you ever were. Yeah - love. Like I said, at sixteen - you've learned nothing. Nothing at all.
And there you have it. The awful truth, the bottom line. When it comes to love... there's no simple fix. You're out there, on your own, and maybe all you can do is hang on...and hope for the best. And lead with your heart. When you're sixteen, passions run high. A simple misunderstanding becomes a matter of life or death. You live from moment to moment. And sometimes, when you're sixteen, the only way to get your love back... is to take it.
