Many of us, if not all, had that one friend when you were young that you spent your practically every waking hour of your childhood with. When I was in first grade I met mine and our friendship lasted all the way to freshman year of high school before I moved to MN. It was like him and I were the modern day Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. We did everything together and a big reason for who I am today is because of the adventures we shared.
I met Andrew when my parents moved us to Nachilly Dr. in New Britain. I wasn’t introduced to Andrew but to the kid that lived across the street. I have no idea what his name was but I remember he had a pinball machine and bragged about it like it was the Scarlett Johannsen of pinball machines. I couldn’t stand this kid. He and Andrew were best friends and I was just the younger annoying new kid being forced upon them. That was until the kid across the street moved. His parents and mine became friendly and felt it was a good idea for him and I to be pals so poor Andrew was handed the daunting task of being my best friend. I could tell he wasn’t too excited about this. Around the ages of 5 and 6 I was what you could call overly sensitive (I was a big freaking baby to be honest.) This little fact drove Andrew nuts so one day when we were riding bikes around he stopped, told me to get off my bike and punched me as hard as he could right in my shoulder. Within seconds I could feel my lower lip start to quiver and my eyes getting watery but just as I was about to just let the tears fall Andrew yelled “DON’T YOU DARE CRY!” And I didn’t. I did the post cry sniffle, wiped the tears away and realized he was right. I was about to cry over something that didn’t even really hurt. After this moment, our friendship began.
Our school was about a half mile walk that we would take every day. He would meet me at my house and we’d go down my street and then up the next. Try letting a 6 and 7 year old walk to school now and you’d be reported to DCF but back then you would walk to school as a kindergartner and no one would bat an eye. We would normally stick to the streets but after a few trial hikes we starting taking the path through “the woods”. Behind the houses across the street from me was a large wooded area that had a path that went to all different parts of our neighborhood. If he followed the right one it led you right to the back of our school, and we dubbed this area “the woods”. Yes, we were very creative. The woods were a source of a lot of trouble for the two of us. These woods held many legends. One was the story of a ghost boy who walked the woods with a blue backpack. The story as it was told to us was that if anyone was to see this ghost it would be the last time anyone would ever see you again. The story was told in school by some of the older kids and as far as we knew it was true. One gorgeous morning I met Andrew up in the woods for our walk to school and we started on our way. We hit the top of the hill that led down towards the path to our school and we spotted something coming towards us. It was him, the boy with the blue backpack. We were frozen in fear. We couldn’t move forward and without even speaking we both turned around and started to make our way back home. As we were walking we heard a voice. Trying to ignore it we just kept walking until the voice spoke again. “Hey! You guys stop!” And we did. If I hadn’t had already stopped to pee, I would have right then and there. We slowly turned around and were face to face with the boy with the blue backpack. Neither of us spoke, we just stood and waited for this boy to do his ghostly thing that he does. But he didn’t suck out our souls or transport us to some evil dimension. He actually provided us with directions to a secret spot in the woods that was the home to a pile of soft mattresses and a rope swing. Now the good Todd and Andrew would have just ignored this information and gone right to school however we were too damn curious to pass it up. We decided to go looking for this swing. As we took off, both of us turned back around to say thank you but he was gone. Vanished into thin air. To this day I still am not sure if this boy was real or not but after this day we were no longer scared of the boy in the blue backpack. So after we gathered ourselves back up we headed off, following the boys directions. Sure enough, there it was just like he said. Not owning a watch, pager, beeper, cell phone or anything like that we had no idea what time it was. As far as we were concerned time did not exist. Up we went, one after another over and over and over again until we were so tired we could barely breathe. As we sat there regaining our strength it hit us that as he put it “SHIT, we forgot about school!” (that was the first time I heard that word and started to use it immediately afterwards.) We jumped up and ran as fast as we could and after what felt like hours we finally got to the schoolyard. But the crazy thing is we were only about ten minutes late. How could that be possible? It should have been at least lunch time if not later. Did we imagine the whole thing? Impossible. We were never ever able to explain this day and we were never able to find the rope swing ever again either. We looked everywhere for years after and it was like it never existed. Maybe the legend of the ghost boy was true. Well if he’s still roaming those woods and if any of you run into him tell him thank you and get those directions again.
I had a paper route when I was maybe nine or ten and Andrew would come with me every now and then to help out. The quicker I finished the quicker we could play wiffle ball or pick on Billy the younger kid who wanted to be cool like us. I would have been Billy if that kid from across the street never moved. Poor Billy. One day after delivering the papers we were passing by “the creek” (yes another creative name for one of our other hangouts), and we found two car stereo’s sitting on the ground. Being the ages that we were we had no use for a car stereo so we decided that smashing them into tiny little pieces was the best thing we could possibly do at this moment. He took one and I took the other and we threw them as high in the air as we could only to watch them fall down below into the creek, smashing on the rocks that were scattered in the water. Once we were satisfied with our destruction we headed to my house. As we got closer to my house we noticed that there were a couple police cars in front of my house. Andrew decided to not stick around and headed home while I quietly walked through the front door. We both thought that maybe someone had seen what we were doing and called our parents. How were we supposed to know that breaking things wasn’t a serious crime? Well once I got into the house my mom grabbed me and told me that someone had broken into my dad’s old Nova and stole his car stereo. It was then that I realized that the radios that we found did happen to look pretty familiar. “Ummmmm… I know where they are,” I said. This caught the attention of the police officers as they quickly came over to see what else I knew. Scared of what my parents might do to me, I just stated the current state of fact. “The radios are down the street by the creek.” What I didn’t expect was for the officer to take me in his police car to show him. He drove down to where I directed him and we both got out. He asked where the radios were and the conversation from this point when kind of like this.
Cop – “Where were the radios son?”
Me – “Well…they were over here, but then they kind of got umm…moved.”
Cop – “Moved?”
Me – “Yes, they got moved down there.” (pointing towards the watery grave that they now resided.)
Cop – “I see. And how did they get “moved” down there?”
Me – “Umm…me and my friend sort of threw them there. Over and over again.”
Cop – “So they weren’t broken when you found them?”
Me – “Are you going to tell my dad?”
Cop – “Tell him what? That his radios were perfectly safe until his own son smashed them to pieces? No, I will not tell him that.”
And with that, he made me pick them out of the water and brought me back home to my parents where my dad mourned the loss of his water soaked smashed up stereo. I don’t remember if I ever told him that I killed his stereo so dad, if you’re reading this, yup, it was me. I’m sorry.
The more I write about what Andrew and I went through as kids the more I remember. Andrew is the reason I started to play baseball. He’s also the one who showed me that I could still watch the playboy channel even though we didn’t get the station on cable. Squiggly lines will not stop a 9 year old from being able to make out the occasional boob! We learned the proper way to spit together. We teamed up to dominate any Nintendo game put in front of us. We got caught playing with matches. Anything there was to do as a kid we managed to do. The one thing I regret is the way our friendship ended. Freshman year of high school my parents decided to move us to MN. The night before we were leaving there was a going away party at my grandmother’s house where all our friends and family came by to see us off. A bunch of us were upstairs playing a board game and up came Andrew. I looked up at him and he looked at me and told me he just wanted to come by and say good bye. The only response I could muster was “Ok. I’ll see you later.” And with that he left. Maybe I didn’t believe I was really going or something but if I could take that moment back I would. After we moved we sent a few letters back and forth but our friendship didn’t last much longer. When I moved back to CT we reconnected but it wasn’t the same. I will never forget the times we shared as kids. I look at my kids now and even though they have friends that they hang out with from time to time it’s not even close to what I had. Reliving our friendship is like watching Stand By Me but without a dead body by the train tracks. It’s my own personal movie that I can rewatch over and over again whenever I want. I can only hope that some of you have that same luxury of your own.
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