A Play Date With Destiny
No, wait. His name was Phil, not Destiny,
After being in the same Kindergarten class with Tom and Heather, who I had known since we were babies, first grade switched things up. Tom and Heather were in the other class together, so I had to go it alone. I was kind of a shy kid. I wasn’t introverted per se, but I had trouble connecting with people. I was comfortable doing my own thing in the most performative way possible, but it was kind of hard for me to make new friends. I knew I had to try, though.
I didn’t have a lot of luck at first. A lot of the other boys were into things that I wasn’t. They were more into sports than me, so I was always the last one picked for whatever game we were playing. I didn’t get included in a lot of what they were doing at recess, which sometimes worked out in my favor. The field at school had a weird layout; it wasn’t perfectly rectangular. In one of the corner, there was basically an alcove that went maybe ten feet deeper. That’s where the boys went when they didn’t want the teachers to know what they were doing. I couldn’t find a picture of it, so kindly accept this lame Paint illustration:
On this particular day, the boys had been out on the field and they suddenly disappeared. This was during lunch, so I was playing with Tom. We were minding our own business when we heard a ruckus coming from that little box in the corner. All the other boys were jammed in there making a lot of noise, and suddenly they all erupted into cheers. Immediately after that, Melissa, a girl in my class, came running out of the corner crying. She ran to the teacher, pointed at all the boys still in the corner, and the teacher went running over there, yelling. Melissa had worn a dress to school, so the boys cornered her and pulled her skirt up so they could see her underwear. All the boys got into trouble except for Tom and me, and maybe one or two other boys playing near us.
Essentially, I didn’t have a lot in common with a lot of the boys. They all seemed to take their cues from Clint and Brad, twins who were short and tried to makeup for it by acting like tough guys. They always acted on their worst impulses, giving the other boys an excuse to do the same. Not me, I was a good kid. I didn’t want to get in trouble. I was terrified of being in trouble. By the way, Clint and Brad feature in another story a few years down the line.
I eventually made friends with a kid named Phil. I wish I could tell you how that came about because I have absolutely no recollection of how we became friends. I remember running into him at Roy Rogers. I was sitting with my sister while our parents were ordering our food. He said hi, and then asked me if that was my mom. No Phil, that was my sister who’s five years older than me. Maybe that’s how we became friendly. He was hanging out when my parents came back, and my mom talked to his mom and they decided I should go over to his house to play.
So one day, my mom drove me over. Phil took me downstairs to the basement where all his toys were. I don’t remember if he had any brothers or sisters, but the basement was very clearly his space. This was 1982, so we primarily played with his collection of Star Wars toys. He was also into trucks and trains, and kept trying to steer me over to playing with those.
The thing was, he had a lot of Star Wars figures that I didn’t have. So I didn’t want to play with trucks and trains. I wanted to play with all his Empire Strikes Back figures that I didn’t have because my mom wouldn’t let me see the movie. She thought it would be “too scary” for me. I mean yeah, I was only four years old when it came out, but I had seen Star Wars and loved it. I was more than a little resentful that she took my sisters to see it and left me home, so that’s why I was determined to play with those toys.
Phil started getting upset because I had no interest in playing with the toys he wanted to play with. He was a crier. His face started getting bright pink, and I realized he was close to melting down. So I decided to compromise, and we found a way to work the trucks into Star Wars. He was happy because he got to play with his trucks, and I was happy because I got to play with his tauntaun. It had a little compartment in its stomach that I loved sticking things into.
After we played for awhile, my mom came back to pick me up. She and Phil’s mom must have decided that next time Phil would come to our house. That meant I had to clean my room. Cleaning my room took foreeeeeeeever. Except it didn’t. My room was very small. I had a big toy chest, and cleaning my room essentially meant I had to pick the toys off of the ground and put them in the chest so my mom could vacuum. I just got distracted really easily. I’d start putting the toys away, and find one or more toys that I hadn’t seen in a while, and I start playing with them. So yeah, cleaning my room took a long time because I quickly forgot I was supposed to be cleaning.
Eventually it got done, and my mom vacuumed the carpet. Honestly, she probably wound up putting most of my toys away, spending ten minutes to do something that I didn’t finish in hours. Maybe even days. I was very good at not doing the things I was supposed to.
Eventually, the big day came and Phil’s mom dropped him off at our house. I led him up to my bedroom, and he seemed kind of confused. But he went along with it. We opened up the toy chest and played on what little floor space I had in my room. I don’t remember what we played with. I remember what we did at Phil’s because he had exotic toys that I had never played with. My toys didn’t hold as much intrigue to me. The toy chest had so many different kinds of toys thrown in there haphazardly. We probably played with toys that didn’t go together. That’s what I did when I was alone. A G.I. Joe or two, some stuffed animals, and my very odd collection of Star Wars toys.
I guess my mom didn’t know what specific Star Wars toys I wanted for my birthday or Christmas, so she just told my relatives to get me Star Wars action figures. She figured I’d be happy with whatever I got, which was true. But the problem was my aunts and uncles gave me a bunch of figures I already had. I had duplicates of at least five different characters, and I had three of another. So I traded my duplicate figures to my friends. Most of my friends weren’t particularly interested in trading because they actually got the figures they asked for. So I mostly traded for Jawas and Ugnaughts. Since they were little, I’d trade my figure for two of theirs. I had so many Jawas.
Anyway, when Phil’s mom came back to pick him up, he threw a tantrum. His face skipped right past bright pink and went straight to dark red. Tears were pouring down his face, soaking his shirt, and he was SCREAMING. Full on laying on the floor kicking and pounding his fists on the floor. His mom was able to calm him down a little, enough that he could explain what he was so upset about in between sobs.
It was the basement. He didn’t get to go in my basement. All his toys were in his basement, so he thought my best toys must be down in mine. My basement wasn’t finished. Concrete floors and walls. All that was down there was our washing machine and dryer, a table to fold clothes on, my dad’s workbench and lots of cobwebs. There may have also been a bathroom down there. I don’t exactly remember when we put that in. My mom tried to explain to him that there was nothing down there for him, but he wouldn’t have any of it. So I had to walk down to the basement with him to show him, which I didn’t want to do because I hated going in the basement. As we stepped off the last stair, he calmed down, looked around, and said “Where are your toys?”
“In my bedroom, where we’ve been playing all day.”
“Really? You don’t have a lot of toys.”
“Can we go upstairs now?”
So we went upstairs, where his mom was waiting to take him home. As they got into their car and drove away, I turned to my mom and said, “I don’t want to play with him anymore.” And I didn’t.
I switched schools after first grade, so I didn’t see Phil again until high school. It was my sophomore year. I saw him walking down the hallway with some kids I didn’t know. He stopped and opened his locker. I was really confused because his locker wasn’t with all the other sophomore lockers. It was in with all the freshman, which was odd. As I walked past him, being very careful not to be seen, I overheard him talking to his friends. Suddenly, it clicked. He was a freshman.
He had obviously been left back at some point after I switched schools. It didn’t happen in Junior High, because I never saw him there once. So it happened in elementary school; maybe even in first grade. I might have left the school and he stayed in that class. I don’t know for sure when it happened because I never talked to him again. But aside from that initial confusion, it totally made sense that he was left back. He was on the football team, which made sense because he was always a big, stocky kid, and was that much bigger than all the kids a year younger than him.
I hope he’s doing well; better than me, at least. I have absolutely no interest in communicating with him, but I never had any ill will towards him. I didn’t hate the kid, I just didn’t want to play with him anymore.