Lovin' this Facebook thing

I am lovin’ this Facebook thing. For some reason, hooking up with distant relatives and old friends seems to flow better than through other web alternatives.

One fascinating aspect is what things people find memorable and I don’t, and vice versa. This is especially true with friends from my childhood.

Leads was a recent reconnection and he surprised me by bringing up something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. He and Klep were waiting on me to finish fixing something on my car so we could go out bombing around. Our nomenclature for cruising.

I had my head tucked under the hood and they were sprawled out on the ground, talking about who knows what. I somehow arced a plug with a tool. The plugs are downstream from the coil, which jacks up the battery current from 12 volts to about 40,000, to the best of my recollection.

I also arced, across the driveway, much to the delight of my pals. I will admit, in the pantheon of guy humor, a buddy getting fried and going airborne ranks pretty high.

I could hardly be critical of Leads. When Wally Pock contacted me, the first thing I thought of was an episode in gym class. He bounded high off the trampoline, if a bit off center, executed a flip and plummeted down into a straddle of the frame. We found it hilarious. I don’t recall him dating much after that.

Along the same lines, Fizz brought up an encounter I had with Mr. Prither, our physics teacher. He looked like a physics teacher sent over from central casting. And, five minutes into his class, you just knew he’d been on the receiving end of wedgies from grades one through twelve.

No crime in having been that, but get over it. He apparently was stained with a lifelong mania against anyone who wasn’t a fellow pariah and singled out all in his classes who appeared to have anything going for them.

One day, it was my turn in the barrel. That night, I was walking to my car with Fizz after a basketball game. The weather was subzero. A car beeped from behind and we got over to the edge of the parking lot. As it drove past, I saw that it was Mr. Prither and muttered something that cast doubt upon the legitimacy of his parentage.

His head whipped around and the car skidded to a halt. Why would I suppose someone would have his window down in that weather? It didn’t help that he leaped out, hit a patch of ice and went down hard on his butt. The memory of that wasn’t something foremost in my mind, but Fizz said the look on my face was something she’d never forget.

Not all reminiscences have been focused on my foibles and some even seemed to smack of cleansing of guilt. Or, so it seemed with Zat.

We lived on the same street. The bond was mainly that, in the fall of ninth grade, he had band practice after school and I had football. We’d walk the mile home together.

That era coincided with Sarah, the new girl in school. All the boys were making a run at her, including Zat and I, but she had her shields turned up to full power. Sarah was all Zat talked about on the way home from school. He described her as the archetypal girl-next-door. You’d have to have extraordinary luck with neighbors for that to be so. She was somewhere between Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood.

One afternoon, Zat was waiting for me in the parking lot. I was approaching him from the wrong direction because Coach Allison had been in a foul mood and gave us some extra nutcracker drills. Zat and I argued about whether he would wait for me to change into street clothes or just head home on his own.

In the midst of this, we heard a musical, “Hi Henry, is that you?” It was Sarah and about four more words than she had uttered to me since she had enrolled.

We bantered giddily while Zat chewed his lip and studied his shoelaces. She asked about an upcoming dance, as though she didn’t know, and I inquired if she was going with anyone yet.

At that point, Zat’s eyes came up to meet hers. “You do know he’s wearing shoulder pads under there, don’t you?”

Zat had carried that around for lo these many years? He was seeking absolution and I told him I had never given it a second thought. That was very big of me.

Of course, if she hadn’t agreed to go to the dance…