Peter Stroobosscher
Changwon, South Korea
Childhood Friend
The last time I saw Ted was at a baseball game in High School. It was short, but not uncomfortable. After a golden childhood, we faced the world in opposite directions. It happens that way. Kids move off, attend different schools. You get your heart broken a bit. That's the well-worn path to adulthood.
The shame of it is that it becomes difficult to string together old memories. I didn't figure on needing them. Kids don't take things in that way. But the memories are somewhere in the back of my head, and I'm going to remember them. Some have come back already in the past couple days. They come back if I train my mind on him. But sometimes they trickle back of their own accord. The other night I was slow dancing, and out of nowhere I just lost it and had to leave the dance floor. The girl I was dancing with came out out a while later and found me at the top of the steps again in tears. Old flashes are working themselves out somewhere in there.
You all write about Ted in a way that makes perfect sense to me. All the warmth of God, the wisdom, patience- all of those things are a picture of Ted that I'd formed already twenty years ago. After all these years, nothing of what you say is out of place. It was all there from the beginning.
We were very competitive. That started when we were 6. I got a black vinyl jacket, which is good as leather when you're six years old. We'd ride up and down Rock Street in Smithville. If I remember right, he was stuck riding a banana seat. I had a red BMX with a leather jacket. Peter 1, Ted 0.
He was the first person to tell me not to eat my own snot. I'm not trying to be funny by saying that. I remember it clear as day, we were 6 or 7, another Rock Street memory. Rather matter-of-fact he said I shouldn't do that because people might think it was gross- invaluable advice going into the first years of grade school. Most kids would've just told me I was disgusting. He gets five points for that one. The things we remember...
He was stronger than I was. But I could run faster. He was no good at monopoly. But we both ruled at Double Dragon arcade version. We discovered that game at Bissels Hideaway one summer. I bragged that I could control traffic with my mind. He bragged that he could control airborne objects with his. No lie. He told me so on the Wellandport Elementary soccer field. (Not the dunking hill, but the lower soccer field.) He played defense because he was a little slower, and when the ball would go up he'd clench his eyes shut and direct the ball with his mind to land somewhere. He swore it worked. I was a little jealous, but only because I found it so enthralling. Most kids would have just told me not to talk silly.
We'd compete in our sleep. Or at least on the verge of sleep. We'd spend weekends at each other's houses. Tim and Ted shared a bedroom downstairs. When I came over, Tim was displaced upstairs and Ted and I would talk well into the wee hours. Finally, just to get ourselves to shut up one of us would make the declaration, "K, next person to talk loses!" And that was it. And so we'd lie there in the dark, quiet as mice. Then two minutes in, I could hear him laughing through his nose, nostrils flaring, and we'd both explode laughing and the whole thing would start up again.
He was my best friend.
I have known many people who have died. But there have always been two people in heaven watching me. One is my cousin Erica Eggink. The other is my Grandpa. They watch me in my moments of true goodness, and in my moments of total depravity. They see it all. Maybe I've appointed them to that station for the sheer impact that their deaths had on me. Or, as a much warmer thought, maybe they've been appointed to me. At any rate, it's been that way for 13 years. But not anymore. Ted is there too now- and don't think for a second that this is a shot at poetry, or sense-making. For me, his presence among them could not be felt with more clarity.
I have to go to bed now. But I am by no means finished. I have nothing but love for anyone and everyone who writes on this page. Whoever it was who is setting this up, Ben if that's you, cheers. I don't know what it is about this medium. Memory becomes permanent here, maybe that's why I am smiling right now. I dunno. Mr. and Mrs. Vellenga, Heidi and Tim, thank you so much for the time you gave me at the church. You are all very much on my mind and in my prayers. God's peace.
