Memory Chains

A whole lot of memories today, flooding back, a tidal wave of nostalgia.

For starters, they have closed the road between Ben's house and mine. It's inconvenient, as he lives in the middle of nowhere, and the detour is ridiculous. So I had vowed to just not go over to his house until it was over and done with. That would have been doable, but of course, when he sold his car, he needed me to pick him up in town.

We hung out at my place doing our typical stupid stuff, this time involving me getting us both covered in rotten pumpkin, but SSDD, right?

Anyways, when I finally took him home, I refrained from dropping him off at the closed off intersection and making him walk the rest of the way in the crazy April snow showers we were experiencing off and on all day.

The detour took us by my old neighborhood, and while that is usually enough to trigger memories, nothing. The important ones were further down the road. The rest of the detour took us down a road I almost never took. Though I did have a very vivid memory of two of the times I took it.

The first, conveniently enough, I was with our most recent follower, Rusty. We were at our friend Steven's, and for we either had to take his brother somewhere, or pick his brother up from somewhere. I don't remember the details, but I was always ferrying him, which was understandable, and his younger brother, for no reason I can think of, around before Rusty got his license. Anyways, this was after he came back from a summer in California with his makeover. His ponytail was gone, he had a goatee, a new pair of sunglasses and a closet full of Hawaiian shirts he was convinced he looked sexy as all get out in.

We were barreling down this back country road at about seventy five in the "Dragon Wagon", my first car. The dragon wagon is a story for another day, when I manage to find pictures of it, but, point being, we were flying down the road, Rusty was hanging mostly out of the passenger window, being navigator because my poor direction sense, and we were singing Bon Jovi's "Shot Through The Heart". I even remember arguing with his brother, Rydog, about the lyrics. Rusty and I were convinced that it was "Shot through the heart, and you're so lame", even though it is "and you're too blame". And I remember yelling at Rusty for directions, and him responding that he couldn't see the road signs. He refused to take off his sunglasses, because they made him look so cool.

As I was driving tonight down that same road, I could almost hear that song, and I could almost feel the Dragon Wagon's steering wheel cover under my fingers. It was a good memory, and it was real.

A couple hundred feet down the same road, I was struck by a memory even further back. It was the summer after eighth grade, and I had just discovered that I could easily bike to Ben's house. So I was over a couple times a week, and we would go biking on that same road. There was a little farm pond off the road we would go and stand at, much like we do now. I remembered another time, when I came over, and I helped him babysit his neighbors. The idea of Ben and I being in charge of children now frightens me. Us doing it almost six years ago is unimaginable. I do recall the kids weren't too young, and mostly Ben and I shot each other with nerf guns while the kids played outside.

I guess that was the real beginning of our friendship. I mean, he moved here in second grade, and even though we went to different elementary schools, I knew him and was friends with him through church, and then in middle school we had the same group of friends. But it was that summer (and the many years at PetLoft a few years later) that defined our friendship.

When I left Maryland a year and a half ago, Ben was one of my few friends who would still talk to me. I've changed a lot, but Ben was one of the only people who was there for me through everything. It was really good to remember why, as I drove him home on some ridiculous detour, still covered a little in rotten pumpkin, whining about how much he was inconveniencing me.

That pretty much sums us up though.