Bobbing in the Wake of Awesome.

“To get back to one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
-Oscar Wilde-



I realized I would never be Cool in seventh grade. Cool has naturally changed since I grew older, but back then Cool was breaking with convention. Cool was watching R-rated movies, especially the ones with nudity, or getting an exorbitant number of detentions. Cool was cursing in earshot of adults or not caring about grades. Cool was grinding with an assortment of girls at the school dance. Cool was Aaron Baker.

Rochester Middle School allocated students into three teams per grade level and spread them throughout the two-story building that probably still haunts the memories of most of my classmates. Aaron Baker happened to be on my team, called, in a cruel bit of irony, the Olympians. Through hindsight and experience teaching middle school, I now see the relative ease in establishing oneself as Defiant, but I remember two moments in seventh grade that pushed him to the vanguard of teenagerdom.

The first came on a Monday. Holding court in the hallway between classes, he gave a stimulating account of his weekend rendezvous with a female classmate at the movie theater where he partook in some below-the-belt hanky-panky. In graphic detail he described the intricacies of the womanly sex organs to the near-drooling gaggle of thirteen year-olds, and graciously provided a rough outline how to be granted access to the southern hemisphere.

The other came a bit later in the year as he showed brazen disregard to school authority by proudly displaying his deck of nudey playing cards to a group of pubescent boys before study hall. “Wow,” I thought, gazing hypnotized over someone’s shoulder, “a Seven of Boobs.” Those snapshots made legends of middle schoolers: demigods in baggy jeans and Airwalk sneakers, leaving the rest of us mortals bobbing in the wake of Awesome.

Aaron and I couldn’t have been on more opposite ends of the spectrum. For starters, he was allowed to go to the movies by himself, a luxury my parents wouldn’t extend for some time. Let alone with a female companion. Secondly, he was already making moves with the ladies. My romantic state of affairs was hampered by remarkably unfashionable glasses, which kept me labeled as Just A Friend for years, so one-on-one time with women was pure happenstance: walking down an otherwise empty hallway, an awkward bump in between bookshelves at the library, car rides with my mom. Aaron had this swagger about him, a devil-may-care, Fuck-tha-Police kind of glow that I desperately wanted. He was Cool, plain and simple. He didn’t seem to care that he could be suspended for bringing the November issue of Playboy into homeroom or telling the science teacher where to shove it, or talking audibly at his locker about the vagina in the sixth row of the Lilac Mall cinema. He seemed untouchable then, a seventh grade made-man, like no punishment could rattle his insubordinate cage.

What didn’t seem to help my ability to attain Cool status was my participation in the geometrically clunky trombone section of the band. Playing a side gig with the school’s jazz band garnered a few points only because the word smooth occasionally preceded the word jazz. However, it was still hard to project yourself as alluring and worthy of desire when you were the lead solo in “Trombonanza.”

My indiscretions were Downy soft in comparison. I pushed the boundaries gently: not making waves, more like sneezing next to a body of water. My Breaking With Convention came in not doing my homework, perpetuating senseless arguments with my parents, and watching the fuzzy porn channel whenever possible. I realized I was light years from Aaron, but it was all I could muster. I grew up in a sensible household. My dad the teacher and my mom the long-time city employee pretty much let me be me. I didn’t change my wardrobe in deference to Coolio or go through a studded dog collar and JNCO jeans goth phase. I didn’t cut myself, or scrawl apocalyptic haikus into notebooks. And I certainly didn’t huff furniture polish as a Korn album looped on my Walkman.

Being an asshole kid just wasn’t in the cards, nudey or otherwise.

*

From time to time when we speak on the phone or if I’m visiting the house, my mother will pluck names from the past, names so cast aside that the remaining picture in my memory yearbook dates back to elementary school. “You remember Patrick Caffey?” she’d ask, her voice dropping to a woeful timbre. She’ll then sigh and shake her head. “Saw his name in the police log. Arrested for assault.” Those are the names I shrug off as the adult me, but once regarded in awe as they sauntered about the elementary school playground. As a ten year-old I never thought that I might join their ranks, but in a fluky loophole of the bad boy bylaws I momentarily had my name carved onto the bathroom wall annals of Cool.

Up until junior year of high school I felt well on my way to receiving a key to the city, or at the very least a municipal Medal of Freedom if such a thing exists. I stayed away from booze, held acceptable grades with both regular and honors classes, steered clear of recreational drugs, didn’t father any illegitimate children, and otherwise stayed far away from the long arm of the law. But as with any A&E documentary, this is where the narrator’s voice turns grim after the second commercial break, depicting an abrupt change in the criminal’s character. A moment when the sociopath’s moral fabric wears thin; when he or she stops paying attention in class and starts skinning cats in the basement.

Dustin Pullman, one of my closest friends in high school, and I formed a wholesome, family-friendly, crime-avoiding duo. Back then we were thick as thieves, amateur hopeless romantics who preferred Mountain Dew as our mind-altering substance of choice. In those days, free from the kung-fu grip of alcohol or marijuana, our fix came from our six-string guitars and the gospel according to Mayer and Matthews.

It was a Friday night and there was nothing on the itinerary. My girlfriend, a freshman, was off doing whatever freshman did, so the two of us were left to our own devices. One would assume that a couple of bright young men might entertain themselves with something intellectual or at the very least give up and go to the movies, but after some abbreviated brainstorming we ventured outside with a dog leash, a longboard, and a navy blue Ford Explorer. Our technique was fairly straightforward. One of us carefully and attentively drove up the inclining street and the other, holding onto the leash, road-surfed. After freely coasting back down, we swapped places and did it again. So while our other friends were busy finding parties where they could drink cheap vodka and attempt to woo unassuming drunk girls, Dustin and I towed each other up and down the streets of his neighborhood.

We tried to imitate the edgy, defiant façade of the Z-Boys of the 1970s, but fell short as we courteously moved aside when the headlights of the occasional car shone behind us, smiling and waving them by. It was my turn to ride the pavement of Vernon Avenue. I carved left and right on the black tar like Bodhi from “Point Break,” one hand raised proudly in the air for balance and showmanship. This, I thought, was living. Then I noticed the bright lights behind me and signaled Dustin to pull to the side. As he pulled onto the grass, the bright lights followed. I turned to look, squinting into the inky suburban abyss. It was the spotlights atop a police cruiser.

A grab bag of terror, panic, and the ensuing conversation with my parents seized hold of my chest. This is it. Sayonara. I’m going to prison. The inevitable onlookers would peek through their curtains. “He was such a good kid,” they’d say, frowning. “He used to play in the band you know.”

Dustin joined me behind his car as a dark behemoth exited the two-tone Crown Victoria. A smaller man with glasses got out of the passenger side. The chaotic flood of blue and white lights caromed off the houses of the quiet neighborhood. Miscellaneous jargon squawked over the radio on the dark behemoth’s belt. I looked at the ground to distract myself in the dirt, the flashing lights exposing my feet strapped in by flimsy thong sandals. An American Eagle tee shirt and jeans completed the high school uniform: hardly the attire for skateboarding behind a sport utility vehicle.

In this situation an officer might assume the role of Sheriff Andy Taylor from “The Andy Griffith Show,” giving us whippersnappers a slap on the wrist and wag of the finger in the television teachable moment: the aw-shucks scene where he’d push his cap back and lean on the cruiser, giving us and the viewers at home an important lesson in safety, but also assuring that our parents would never find out. The difference here was Sheriff Andy Taylor had just retired and his stand-in, along with a taser and expandable baton, came equipped with a sizable hard-on for justice. He walked toward the car, the silvery FTO pin on his lapel flashed in the moonlight. The dark behemoth was a Field Training Officer, and the bespectacled man-boy next to him with a fresh high-and-tight and cuts on his face from the morning glide of his Mach3 was a rookie.

We weathered the morality-laden lecture from the FTO and waited as they ventured back to the dark confines of the police car, standing awkwardly in the piercing beams of the Crown Vic headlights like a third grader’s talent show nightmare. I prepared myself to accept the cold steel of the cuff clicking shut on my wrists, crushing the hopes and dreams of any shot at a normal life. He approached us spindly, scared-shitless seventeen year-olds and with a rip handed us each a piece of yellow paper. I squinted between the flashes to make out his handwriting. Dustin’s sheet read Reckless Endangerment, which, frankly, sounds quite impressive. It rang of something chase-worthy, involving backyards, German shepherds and pepper spray, and the later signing of waivers allowing them to show his face on television. I wanted something gritty and thuggish like that, something I could boast around school to the cute girls eavesdropping behind math binders. Holding my yellow sheet I thought of friends who were caught for speeding, but never so much as mentioned anything to their parents. Most had the luxury of paying their tickets quickly and quietly.

Not this time.

The yellow sheet he handed us was a summons to court. A day in which I would defend myself in front of a judge not for peddling imported drugs or breaking into Hyundais or defrauding the elderly, but for Clinging to Vehicles Prohibited, a crime that comes with as many perplexed looks as it does laughter.

It was late when we finished talking to Dustin’s parents. They pursed their lips in disappointment, shook their heads, and sighed long sighs; a likely reaction from parents when their supposedly shining examples of well-behaved young men return home completely sober with a newly acquired court date.

Since Dustin picked me up earlier he had to drive to me home, so we woke my mother from a dead sleep to give her the news. As I tried to mitigate the situation she stood very still, her arms folded tightly against her bathrobe, wearing an icy, discouraged scowl that grew more and more menacing with each hollow, but-we-were-under-thirty-miles-an-hour justification. I can tell when my mother is angry because she uses some form of the word fuck.

That night she was angry.



My hands trembled as my mother and I walked through the doors of the county courthouse, me in my khaki pants and button-down shirt, she in a hopeful air that inside would be a minimal number of people she’d recognize. I walked through the metal detector as she prepared her purse for screening. “Annie May?” an older man in a burgundy blazer asked. “You can go right on through!” The high-spirited man in the blazer, the bailiff, is somebody she’s known going on twenty years.

Before the slew of trials and arraignments began, those to be seen by the judge were required to sign in with the clerk of the court. Dustin and I waited in line and I wondered what the other people had committed. Kidnapping, extortion, maybe assault. Either way it was certainly more exciting than clinging to a vehicle. Sober. On a Friday night. Wearing thong sandals.

It had to be.

“Alexander May,” I said, almost whispering.

“You Anne May’s son?” she replied without looking up.



I walked back to the bench where we sat. “Do you know everyone here?” I asked, not wanting an answer. She closed her eyes and sighed.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Later the bailiff walked a teenager that looked about the same age as us in front of the judge. He wore an orange jumpsuit with accompanying shackles and was arraigned on stolen gun charges. He stood in front of the court, stoic and unflinching, as a date was set for sentencing. Then they escorted him out of the room, back to what I imagined was a cold, lonely cell. I felt relief both that I wasn’t in his prison issue slip-ons and that he wouldn’t see a maudlin, apologetic fellow seventeen year-old brought to the brink of tears because of a skateboard, a dog leash, and a navy blue Ford Explorer.

My turn came.

Timid and concise and repentant, I stood in front of the judge and braced for impact. The armpits once protected by Old Spice were now ponds of anxiety. The ruling would certainly send shockwaves through the community. CITY WORKER’S SON IMPRISONED, the headlines would read. I’d no longer be a Friend, but That Guy people went to school with. “Seemed like a nice dude,” they’d say to the documentary cameras, “never saw it coming.” College was certainly out the window. Nobody wants a felon sitting next to them at orientation. I found out shortly before my court date that the man who would hand down my judgment and forever seal my teenage fate lived right up the street.

Perfect.

I’d be the black sheep of Chesley Hill, hiding my face as I walked the dog past his house. He’d be on the riding mower in comfortable shorts, top-siders, and a teal “I’d Rather Be in Aruba” tee shirt, pursing his lips and shaking his head.

Just perfect.

But despite my gripping fear of withering away in a jail cell or the idea of my slender soccer-figure in a prison shower, I received twenty hours of community service.

And that was that. My fleeting moment in the unlawful limelight, clumsily tiptoeing around the scales of justice, was over. No orange jump suits or biweekly visits to a parole officer. I finished the community service in a few weeks and bided my time until my record was expunged on my eighteenth birthday. When all was said and done, and although I added a court visit to my life resume, Clinging to Vehicles Prohibited would not be something I’d be boasting about to my grandchildren or to attractive women at bars.

My belly flop into the Cool pool was a mistake, a loss of footing as I attempted to troubleshoot a moral compass gone awry. A miscue that Aaron Baker wouldn’t have applauded, but rather laughed at like everyone else did. I wasn’t meant to flirt with defiance or take the skewed, immoral road less traveled. It just wasn’t in my trombone-playing DNA.

In the end after an escapade brimming with ineptitude and humiliation, Dustin came out holding the trump card. Because on that abruptly seminal Friday night when I was seventeen and foolish and blissfully unaware of just about everything, it came down to simple predicates.

He endangered.
I clung.