Toby’s Trip
By
Charles Weeden
“I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.”
Jennifer Elisabeth
Contents
Introduction
Toby is the kind of kid everyone likes. Sure, he is not your typical kid, and he pulls stunts like on his first day in the computer lab or when he makes up complicated coaching signs, but he brings you into his world and becomes one of your best and closest friends – at least he became mine.
The first thing you notice about Toby is that he looks exactly like a ‘Toby.’ Okay, I don’t know anyone else named Toby, but if someone had asked me to pick a name for him, I would’ve somehow come up with Toby.
His name isn’t even short for his real name, which is how parents usually handle the problem of having one name for a kid and another when the kid grows up. For instance, you might be Jimmy or JJ as a kid, but at some point, it changes to James. Same person – different wrapper. Toby’s name identifies him as well as any name I’ve known and there’s no question as to Toby or not Toby.
Since I’m talking about names, let me add that I don’t know why we decide someone’s name when they’re born. What’s the rush? It isn’t like the baby is going to respond. How do we know if they are a Brad or a Beth? Names matter to kids, and the wrong name can, okay, I’ll say it, give a kid an identity problem. If I’m named after my grandfather, am I supposed to be or act like him? Parents also name their kids for characters in the movies or baseball players. How will that work out? A name is more than a label, isn’t it?
In 6th grade, we studied the Native Americans. They have the right idea because they don’t pick the adult name until a kid is old enough to show a personality or character. Then, they pick a name that means or describes something, like Running Bear if a kid is a big, fast runner or Babbling Brook if someone talks too much. Other names, however, are tough to determine. What does a kid do to get a name like Sitting Bull?
Here’s what happened from my perspective: The explorers came over from Europe and met the Native Americans. Now, did they say to themselves, ‘Hey, these guys have a better way to name kids than we do? Let’s tell everyone back in Europe.’ Nope, they didn’t because, in truth, they weren’t curious about Native American culture and didn’t want to take the time or make the effort to understand their ways. If anyone should be curious about new things, shouldn’t it be an explorer?
Sadly, adults often do things backward. Now, I could go on and on with examples, but I’ve been trying to figure out why they do, and the only reason I can find is that somehow backward is easier. As Toby and I discovered, it is hard to take the time to understand someone before deciding what’s best for him.
At this point, my English teacher would write in large red script, “The introduction must inform the reader what you will say. Start over!” But I’m not writing this for school as I’m off to college this Fall, but rather to recount what happened to Toby in high school. Perhaps I shouldn’t have digressed on names and explorers, and I do want you to read this story, so I will start over and provide a proper introduction to Toby. Sometimes, starting over is not backward but, strangely, the right way.
Toby’s Trip: Take Two
The most amazing thing about Toby is that he is always into something. Let’s say you have a baseball game on Saturday afternoon and are in bed pondering what to do until game time. Somewhere in the Parents’ Duty Manual, there is a rule that kids can’t do anything fun on Saturday until they’ve done their chores. Your mom is downstairs deciding on an appropriate chore. As soon as you sit down for pancakes, she’ll clear her throat and tell you to mow the lawn before going to the baseball field. She can then relax because she’s followed Section 7A in the Duty Manual. Even if she doesn’t want you to do something, she knows she will, or she’ll fail Saturday morning.
Your goal, on the other hand, is to have breakfast and do something until the game without getting a chore that wears you out. I have a plan that almost always works, though I only use it occasionally. I go downstairs, appearing flustered and in a big hurry. I then exclaim, “How could I have overslept? This is awful! You should have woken me up an hour ago.”
This ruse accomplishes two things: First, it lets the parents know there is no time for the chores they’ve planned; second, it puts them on the defensive because they worry they have forgotten something.
Of course, they don’t know, so ask, “Why? What’s so important this morning?”
“I must go over to Toby’s before the game. I promised to throw him some pitches to warm him up.”
Then, just for good measure, I add, “Mom, you know he’s not a very good hitter and really needs my help.”
Now, this final sentence works like a well-thrown sinker at which parents can’t decide whether to swing or not. This is the considerate stuff that Mom is always telling me I should do. Sometimes, she’ll get mushy and believe her efforts to turn me into a nice young man have paid off.
Still, a small voice inside her says, “That’s the second time he’s pulled that excuse this month. Don’t let him get away without doing at least a small chore! Remember 7A!”
On her face, I see she is wrestling with this dilemma. Ultimately, Mom always gives me the benefit of the doubt and believes that a good person is more important than a responsible one.
I also believe I do them a favor. Saturday mornings are tough on everyone. My folks also need to relax and recover from their hard week. Why give them the guilt of watching me pitifully push a mower back and forth across the lawn? Parents have lots of problems, and if I can save them some guilt, why not?
Mom insists that I eat a good breakfast, which is great as I need the energy for the game. Afterwards, I take out the garbage, which may not be necessary, but it’s easy, on the way to my bike, which is in the garage. We all had a great start to the weekend, and everyone was happy. After I leave, Mom asks Dad, “Isn’t that nice?” to which he mutters something from behind a newspaper.
On a morning in July, I bike the five blocks to Toby’s house. Most of the houses in our neighborhood are relatively new, as the developer bulldozed an orchard on productive farmland. Not sure why he couldn’t leave the orchard and build the houses on the hill behind, but perhaps there is a good reason. Toby’s house is the original farmhouse with many cool rooms, such as an apple bin in the basement and a big cider vat. It is also the only house in the neighborhood with a big enough backyard to hit fly balls or practice grounders.
Toby’s house is on a street called Woo Way. Since it is such an odd name, I ask Dad who named it. He says, “Some Chinese guy came here, bought and developed the land.” He then adds, “and made a fortune cookie.” To which he laughs. I doubt this answer, so ask Mom. She says, “No, it’s named Woo Way because it used to be a quiet street where all the young men would bring their sweethearts after the high school dances.” I never asked them together, but I now know that people generally find the answers that are right for them.
When I get to Toby’s, two of my teammates are already there: Juan, our first baseman, and Robbie, our pitcher. I never told them how I used Toby to escape chores, but I suspect Toby’s is a safe house for all of us.
Toby’s mom tells me that everyone is upstairs and assembling a gas-powered model airplane that just arrived from Toby’s dad.
“Toby,” advises Juan, “you have to put this piece on next.”
“Wait, no, this one goes here,” Robbie volunteers.
“I know how to build these,” Juan responds. “I did one once with my dad.”
If you had just arrived and surveyed the scene as an outsider, you would notice several things: First, the instructions remain safely sealed in their plastic envelope at the bottom of the box. They exist out of reach, like the sealed answers to a math test. Second, Toby is oblivious to the commotion that surrounds him. With all the pieces laid out before him, his eyes twinkle in anticipation. He studies one piece, then another, and imagines each alone and how these two might fit together.
“Toby, here, this one,” urges Juan.
Toby takes the piece from Juan, looks over the others, and finds a group with three other pieces, which he glues together. You see, the thing with Toby is that you like to be with him. He gets so involved in whatever he is doing that you get sucked into his world. A project like building a plane grows until it encompasses the entire universe – like a supernova we learned about in science. Time and all other distractions disappear into his world.
Toby’s mom somehow knows this and has an incredible sixth sense about when you need to be where. I’ve tested this. For instance, once I went to Toby’s house and had to be back home by five. I never mentioned it, but somehow, his mom knew, and she yelled upstairs a little before five to let me know that it was time to go.
She also senses exactly what you want for lunch. You, yourself, don’t know, but she inevitably appears with just the right sandwich at the right time. She also says things I don’t understand, but then think I understand later, like when I’m half asleep.
We work on the plane all morning, and the real fun is building collectively with Toby and friends. If we follow the instructions, we are doing what thousands of other kids have done before. But our way is unique, and the plane becomes different from all the others. We have put ourselves into the plane, and it becomes a combination of the plane parts, our talking, arguing, and mistakes that are all part of our morning effort.
When the last piece falls into place, we high-five each other. I ask Toby what he wants to name it.
Toby responds that we should wait to name it until we can see how it flies. He adds, “You have to be careful because you can’t name it The Flying Falcon if it turns out to be a Dying Duck.”
After we finish, Toby’s mom comes in with snacks, which we put in our backpacks with our mitts and balls, and bike to the ball field.
The other thing about going to Toby’s is that you always play your best baseball afterward. Getting absorbed into Toby’s world clears your mind. You may think I mean how you feel after a good night’s sleep, but I don’t. It’s different. When you wake up after sleeping, it seems like all the things that are on your mind just pick right up again where they left off. Like an ad during a television show. But after a morning at Toby’s, you feel like you have cleaned up your brain and taken out the garbage. It is hard to explain, but things are clearer; the baseball is bigger and moves more slowly. Time slows, and I can concentrate on the game. In the Toby Zone, I make the right throws and hit as well as possible. If we have a big game, hanging out with Toby is crucial to my warmup routine.
I am a pretty good shortstop and hit second in the lineup. My dad was a great baseball player in high school, and his team made it to the state championships. It was a highlight of his life, which he always retells. I hope to follow in his footsteps and take baseball more seriously than other sports.
Toby is our catcher, which is the only position he can play. I told you that he looks exactly like a Toby, but in case you picture a ‘Toby’ differently than I do, I’ll describe: Toby is a little heavy, wears glasses, and has a slight waddle in his walk. His cheeks look fuller than they actually are because his dimples when he smiles are incredibly deep.
Toby is so-so as our catcher. His biggest problem is that he can’t squat as low as a catcher should. He’s tried everything, including stretching exercises, but just can’t get down low enough. He catches most pitches in the dirt.
During our summer between 6th and 7th grades, Toby decides to make an adjustment. He moves forward, so pitches will be higher and easier to catch.
By our first game, he is squatting closer to home plate than before. When the first batter of the lineup walks up, Toby sticks out his glove so it is perhaps only six inches behind the plate. The batter sees the mitt, worries he might hit it, and moves a bit forward in the batter’s box.
I watch Toby do this during the inning, and the first two batters pop up. The first was to Robbie, and the second to Juan. The third batter hits a ground ball towards me. I make a back-hand stab and pivot, and while still moving toward third base, I throw my sidearm with enough speed across the diamond to beat the runner at first. It is my signature play, and I practice it endlessly – maybe too much. For instance, a week before, I couldn’t write my paper on summer reading and threw the ball sidearm against the wall until my dad yells, “Cut it out.”
After making this play for the third out, I ran towards the dugout. Both Robbie and Juan high-fived me and told me that I made it look easy.
Since I bat second, I grab my bat and stand in the on-deck circle. Juan, our leadoff hitter, hits a line drive to left field and takes a big turnaround first. Many teams use our field, so deep foot holes exist in the batter’s box. As I come to bat, I kick dirt into them to get a better stance. Now, in Little League, everybody likes to bat, so most players take the first pitch to get a chance to look at the pitcher’s style and to stay at bat a little longer. The smart pitchers know this and always try to throw a first-pitch strike to get ahead in the count. I’m not a great hitter, but I know this and almost always swing on the first pitch. I also know what the smart play is with Juan on first, and I bunt the first pitch down the third base line, sacrificing Juan to second. I’m thrown out at first and return to the dugout. Since Toby bats 9th in our lineup, I sit next to him.
“Toby, your mitt is getting pretty close to home plate.”
“Maybe a little.”
“How come?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Toby replies with a smile. His two dimples resemble the two holes in the batter’s box.
The rest of the game follows the same pattern as the first inning. Opposing batters mostly hit pop-ups that are easy for the infield to handle. We score four more runs and end the game with a 6–0 win. As Toby and I bike home, I notice he has the same look on his face that he had the first day in class, which is when I first saw the Toby look. I also know it means he is up to something.
Over the next several games, we continued to win. If anything, Toby’s glove got even closer to the plate as batters got set to hit. After winning our fifth game in a row, I challenged Toby as we bicycled into town, “I know you’re up to something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve tried to figure it out, but I can’t. I’m not sure what you’re doing. What I do know is that we’re getting a lot of pop-ups, and we’re undefeated.”
“Yep, we certainly are playing great,” he responds, evading my question.
After our 6th straight win, Toby and I stop at the ice cream store to celebrate. The store advertises that it has over one hundred flavors, but none of the names describe the taste, and it usually just refers to the color. Perhaps the guy who names the ice creams comes from a crayon company. Once, I ordered a cone of Purple Passion, which I thought would be grape-flavored but tasted more like eggplant. The way we decide which ice cream to order is to ask the clerk for samples on little spoons. I typically taste two or three and then order. Toby, on the other hand, continues to taste until the ice cream clerk loses his temper and demands that Toby choose.
“But your slogan is,” Toby counters, “‘Taste as many as you like until you find the one you like.’” Toby points to the sign behind the counter. The clerk gives him a stare, which might be described as a look of Purple Passion.
We sit with our ice cream cones, but Toby says, “Wait a minute,” and goes back up to the counter to ask the clerk for a pencil.
“Here, and if you don’t like it, come back, and you can try all the other pencils.” To the clerk’s crack, Toby smiles.
Toby returns to the table, takes a big bite of ice cream, and sketches a batter’s box, the plate, and a catcher on the paper placemat.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Well, I see that your mitt gets close to home plate.”
“And what happens next?”
“Well, most batters move forward in the batter’s box.”
“Yeah?” Toby asks. His Toby look wants me to solve the riddle.
I know all of this, but I still don’t see that it matters. The batter just moves forward. Toby is both pleased and disappointed that I can’t figure it out.
“Okay,” I struggle to catch on, “so the batter moves forward six inches. So what?”
Toby asks, “Have you ever tried to do it?”
I think about it. “No, because when you move forward in the batter’s box, you can’t get a level stance. You end up with the left side of your feet higher than the right.”
“Right, Einstein. Then what?”
It hit me: “If your feet are on a sideways slant, then your swing goes from low to high, resulting in pop-ups.”
We calculate and determine that pushing a batter forward a couple of inches onto the slant makes an eight-inch difference from the back to the front of his swing.
“So that’s why we get so many pop flies,” I finally realize. “Toby, that’s brilliant. How did you come up with this?”
“I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t mean to think of it. As you know, it’s hard for me to get into a low crouch, so I decided to move closer to the plate. When I did, I noticed that the batters also moved forward so that they didn’t hit my mitt. Their swing levels changed, and we got more pop-ups.”
He smiles. “So, it was just by accident. I find that my inability to crouch helps the team more than if I were just a good, flexible catcher.”
Our next game is against the Giants, who won the previous summer league championship. Of course, I pull my ‘have to help Toby’ routine, though my folks are catching on to my scam.
In the top half of the first inning, the Giants get a hit to the outfield and two pop-ups. Their cleanup hitter comes next to the plate. This guy is the strongest and best hitter in the league. As he approaches the batter’s box, Toby holds out his glove. The batter looks at the glove, slightly motions forward in the box, but then shifts back.
“He’s not buying,” I say to myself looking in from short.
The batter takes two balls down and away as Juan pitches around his power. Juan knows he needs a strike and throws the next one, a fastball, down the middle. A sequence of sounds follows, including a muffled thud, a sharp crack, and a subsequent cry of pain. The bat hits the back of Toby’s hand and sends Toby into the dirt with a broken hand.
I thought Toby would be upset about not playing for the rest of the summer. If this happened to me, I would mope around and make everybody’s life miserable. But Toby shows up at our next practice with a newly plastered hand, and we all take turns writing and signing. Toby asks the coach if he can help; by the next game, he is our official statistician. Not only does he keep track of every pitch and hit on our team, but he also scouts the other teams. Soon, he can recite the percentages and tendencies of every pitcher and hitter in our league.
With all this great information, Toby needs to communicate it to everyone on the field. He asks the coach if he can set up a signaling system and then checks out every book in the library about secret codes. Toby writes up his system in a thirty-page manual, and it is, by far, the most complicated signaling system that Little League has ever seen.
We practice the system before and after each practice, and soon everyone knows it well enough that Toby can signal to Robbie what an opposing pitcher typically throws on a 2-strike count or where a hitter hits a fastball. The team loves the system and finds it’s fun to send messages in class and at home with our parents at the dinner table. Whenever there is a break on the field, Toby tests me by signaling the most complicated message he can think of. If I understand, I feel like I’ve discovered an incredible secret.
The strangest thing about that summer is that Toby had more fun being our official statistician and code sender than if he were still our catcher. I should’ve learned from this, as it was the most important secret message that he sent me that season – and one that I didn’t decode.
We reached the league championship game, and my dad took off work to watch. That evening before, he said, “Play well – this will be good preparation for the high school team.”
We had a chance to win the game in the ninth but lost 4-3 to the Giants. Winning those first six games on pop-ups and knowing everything there was to know about the other teams is the reason we got as far as we did. So, after the game, we voted Toby our team’s most valuable player. His eyes are moist as he takes the plaque from the coach.
“Toby, Toby, Toby,” we chorus. “Speech, speech, speech.” Toby signals his thanks to us in code.
The MVP from that Little League season is the only athletic award Toby has won.
I biked over to Toby’s house the next day, more out of habit than anything else, and congratulated him again on the award, which now resides on the farmhouse mantel. But Toby wasn’t in his usual mood, and I asked, “What’s up?”
“My dad came up from the city to see the game. He says that I shouldn’t be wasting my summers playing baseball. I need to be doing something more important for my future than wasting it as an assistant coach for a Little League team.”
“Like what?” I ask. “Does he want you to go to a summer school or something?” The only kids that I know who go to summer school are not those who want to get ahead, but those who can’t keep up.
“I don’t know,” Toby replies.
First Day
Toby and I are great friends, but I don’t know if there has been a stranger start to a friendship. He transferred into our junior high school halfway through 7th grade, and I recall my feeling that this new kid was different from the start. When most kids enter a new school, they worry about making a good impression on teachers and other kids and fret that they won’t find new friends as good as the ones they had at their previous.
When Toby comes in, our teacher, Ms. Mobius, asks him what he wants to be called. “Toby,” he replies.
Even then, I think to myself, ‘Yep, that works. Absolutely, a Toby.’
He had that special look – the same one I’ve seen many times since. It’s the look when he has put two pieces of a model together, or the look after he receives his MVP plaque. I call it the ‘Toby look’ and his face is the only one I’ve seen and, perhaps, the only one it can be on.
Ms. Mobius asks what school Toby transferred from, and Toby replies with the name of a private school in the city. She is very impressed and follows up by asking, “Why did your parents move out of the city in the middle of the school year?”
“They divorced,” Toby responds.
Ms. Mobius becomes flustered, although Toby appears perfectly at ease. This is an odd reversal, I think.
That statement becomes even more true, as I soon discover.
Ms. Mobius asks Toby to sit in a seat at the back of the class next to me and continues with her lecture on obtuse angles. About five minutes later, Toby raises his hand. Ms. Mobius must look down at her notebook to recall his name.
“Yes…Toby?”
“May I go to the bathroom? Can he show me where?” He points directly at me.
“Sure. Won’t you assist our new classmate?” She asks me.
“Yeah, sure.”
She fills out the hallway passes, and we head to the bathroom. On our way back, we pass the computer lab, and Toby looks in. The room is empty.
“Cool,” Toby says and then discovers the door is unlocked.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You stand here and be my lookout. I worked on these computers at my old school.”
“You can’t go in there!”
“Why not? The door’s open. Stay here and tap twice if you see someone coming.”
I have three options: I can go into the computer lab with Toby, stand watch as he asks, or go back to class and tell Ms. Mobius that Toby is still in the bathroom. I consider each and decide that I should probably stand watch and hope Toby doesn’t get in trouble on his first day.
Whatever Toby is doing takes forever, and I finally tap twice, even though no one is coming.
Toby emerges, looks around, and asks, “Why’d you tap?”
“You were taking too long. What are you doing anyway?”
“Not much, but I did change your grade on the last test from 79 to 89. Did we have some trouble with those geometry proofs?” And then he shows me just how deep those dimples really are.
Somehow, on our first day, I knew that things were going to be different with Toby around – a lot different.
Stonington and
Smokey’s
As happens during junior high school, signs emerge that the good times will not last. The World began to encroach upon Our World. Sure, some of the changes, including hanging out with friends after school, are great, but there was change nonetheless, and change is change.
In 10th grade, Toby and I feed into the regional high school, Academy High. Academy was built on top of a hilltop by an architect who cared more for his fellow architects than students. It is visually stunning and, I’m sure, won awards from whatever society of architects bestows such things. I’m also sure the evaluation committee toured it on one of the pleasant summer days for which it was designed: Long covered walkways connecting the many classroom buildings. Between buildings, there are views of landscaped grounds and, in the distance, gentle rolling hills.
But new students quickly learn that the open-sided walkways won’t protect them from the sidewise gale-force winds and rain during winter. Before going from one classroom building to the next, students need to zip up their raincoats, tighten their backpacks, and prepare for the blast. Nothing escapes. Rain seeps into notebooks, and last night’s essay turns into ink blots.
Before ever visiting the site, the architect planned to model it on Plato’s Academia. He envisioned his picture in a magazine, holding his award and declaring that his ‘open-air architecture fosters open minds.’ He took his vision and decided there was no need to visit during the academic year. To this day, he doesn’t know how dysfunctional his design truly is.
So, my question is: Shouldn’t you visit a building site during the winter when the students will actually walk from class to class? Shouldn’t you research such things as prevailing winds, rain direction, and temperatures? I guess the answer is ‘no.’ Once the architect had his idea, he was going to build it. I’ll mention it again: Adults usually do things backwards.
We’re now in high school and Toby and I have come ‘of age.’ We will enjoy all the things our teenage years offer: Cars, serious athletics, and even a social life.
I begin 10th grade studying as long and hard as possible in hopes that my grades will be good enough to allow me to coast in the spring when I’ll need time to practice and travel with the baseball team. Toby, meanwhile, discovers the high school computer lab provides unlimited access to powerful computers and the Internet. It crosses my mind that if my grades aren’t good enough during the Fall, Toby might adjust a couple for me again.
We only share gym class, but we keep close. I often go to Toby’s house after school or whenever I need that ‘nova’d’ feeling.
And though we came to Academy High for change, unfortunately, the changes that came upon us in early spring were not those we anticipated.
Toby seldom talks about his dad, but I have a good idea about what happened from comments made over the years. Toby’s mom grew up in our town, went to college, and landed a job at a bank in the city. There, she met Toby’s dad, who was one of the senior officers and could take her to fancy restaurants and to sporting events to which the bank had tickets. When Toby’s mom and dad divorced, she wanted Toby to grow up in a place she knew and would feel comfortable raising him. Several times a year, Toby heads into the city to visit his dad, but says that he just hangs around the apartment waiting for his dad to get home from work or get off a telephone call. When they are together, Toby says that his dad just talks about business and how it is essential to focus on studies, which will ultimately lead to a lucrative career. Toby is always glad to return to his mom’s farmhouse and friends and usually brings a present with him. On Toby’s last visit, his dad gave Toby a new computer.
On one visit to Toby’s, I walked downstairs to get something to drink. As I poured a glass of juice, I heard Toby’s mom say in a hushed, angry voice, “Why? He’s happy here. Why mess this up, too?”
I feel uneasy as I reenter Toby’s room and ask, “Did you do anything special with your dad?”
Toby replies while he types on the keyboard. “Yes, we drove out to my dad’s old boarding school, Stonington.”
“Why?”
“Dad thinks I should go there. He is always talking about how important it is for me to get a better education. Stuff like, ‘how the friends I meet in boarding school will be business friends forever’ and ‘how I can get into a better college from Stonington than I can from here.’”
“Do you think you’ll have to go?”
“I don’t think so. Dad says my grades aren’t good enough. As you know, I’ve been spending too much time in the computer lab and not doing my homework.”
Toby and I took the bus back to his house one Friday after school in early March. I asked him to hit me ground balls so that I could prepare for my baseball tryouts the following Monday. I know I need the practice as two other shortstops are competing for the position.
But Toby’s Mom is upset and tells Toby in a hushed voice that Toby’s dad has sent a letter. For the first time, she tells me it is time to go when it isn’t.
The following Saturday morning, I came downstairs thinking about what plan I could use to foil Section 7A when we heard a knock on the door and Toby entered. This never happens; Toby always has a project or something going on. I can’t recall another time that he “dropped by.” Something’s up.
“Do you want me to hit you ground balls at the field?” he asks.
‘This is serious,’ I conclude.
“Sure,” I reply. “Mom, can I go to the field? I need the practice.”
Mom is one adult who tries to understand. She has my chore list in hand, but she senses that this isn’t the time and, as she always does, figures out how to arrange it.
“Sure, but will you pick up these things on your way home?” She hands me a list. 7A check.
We don’t speak on our way to the ball field, but as Toby picks up his bat, he announces, “My dad wants me to go to Stonington next year.”
“Why?” is all I can stutter.
“Still his crap about a better education, getting ahead. That I’m not challenged, and I need to meet new friends.”
“But your grades…”
“Dad says the school likes legacy kids. I also think he donated money to grease the process.”
For the first time in the years that I’ve known Toby, I see the light in his eyes flicker.
Mine flickers, too, as I imagine what 10th grade will be like without Toby.
He grabs some balls, motions me to short, and starts hitting ground balls. As he hits, he swings harder and harder until all the balls are past me into left field. I jog out to retrieve them and look back as Toby drops his bat and crouches down behind the plate, making the motions of sticking out his mitt. He smiles. He then signals me with the codes from that Little League season that seems like a lifetime ago. I respond. We are trying to use our own secret language to understand something incomprehensible.
As I leave the bag of balls at the plate, Toby comments, “Dad says it was watching me signal to the team in the championship game against the Giants when he realized that I need to be pushed and challenged.”
“Strange,” I respond. “I saw a guy having fun playing baseball with a bunch of his friends.”
“Well, he sure didn’t see that.”
Toby continues to hit ground balls for another hour. It is just the thing for both of us. We hope to keep our bodies busy as our minds wrestle with the looming changes in our lives.
Toby accompanies me to the store while I pick up the things on Mom’s list, and we attempt to come to terms.
“We can hang out when you’re back,” I volunteer. “And we still have all summer.”
“Yeah,” Toby replies.
But things have already changed. Toby’s dad decided that Toby should change without really finding out whether it was right for him. Both of us knew this and were at an age when we wanted to know why.
After we part, two things become painfully clear. First, my life will change without Toby around; second, Toby is the one kid I know who didn’t need to change. Some people need change because they are mad or troubled. Kids and mothers can usually tell, but Dads are often clueless, but often decide.
That night, I asked my parents if they have heard of Stonington. Both nod.
“Fine school, why?” asks Dad.
“Toby is going there next year,” I reply.
“Oh, it’s a very good school. He’ll get a great education. Costs a lot, but Toby’s dad makes tons of money,” he comments on all the points except the one that matters to me.
“Does Toby want to go?” asks Mom, who understands why I pose the question.
“No, but he doesn’t really know anything about it. His dad applied for him and leveraged his legacy connections.”
“They have a great science department,” Dad adds as if intent on piling on irrelevancies.
“You’ll miss him, won’t you?” queries Mom, who zeroes in on the issue.
“Yeah.”
The tryouts for the baseball team are on Monday after school. That Sunday night at dinner, Dad retells the story of his high school team and how they made it to the state finals. I know the game by heart. Dad went four for four in the game with one home run. With a distant tinge of bitterness that has not diminished over the intervening twenty years, he recounts, “Every time we got the lead in the top half of an inning, the pitching staff gave it away in the bottom half.
“We should have won that game,” he concludes as if doing so would have changed history.
Mom agrees, as she was at the game. She and Dad were high school sweethearts, and during the party after the game, he proposed. She accepted, and they married the summer after high school. Dad joined his father’s insurance company. Being part of that high school baseball team and the almost-championship are his fondest memories. His son will now follow in his footsteps, and he’ll relive his memories through me.
Dad announces that he will get off early on Monday to watch the tryouts; this just adds to my growing, ominous feeling. First, since the tryouts are after school, I can’t properly prepare at Toby’s beforehand. Second, Dad will watch me play for the first time since our Little League championship game.
After school, I change in the locker room and spend a few minutes trying to create the Toby feeling. I close my eyes, but one a teammate interrupts.
“Plan to sleep through the tryouts?”
I’m now somewhere between the ‘Toby Zone’ and a panic attack.
I see Dad in the stands as the coaches start with the outfielders. Robbie is trying out as a pitcher, and we warm up together.
The coaches make their outfield decisions and then ask the infielders to come onto the field. As I pass the stands, Dad says, “Remember, stay down on the ball and watch it go into your mitt; when you’re hitting, choke up and just try to make contact. No one expects an infielder to be a power hitter.”
All this is good advice, but only adds to my trepidation; events are coming at me far faster than Robbie’s fastball.
I am the third and last person to try out for shortstop. The first player is an 11th-grader who played on the team the previous year. He knows the coaches and jokes, “Come on, Coach, hit me some hard grounders. Is that all the power you’ve got?”
He is at ease, and even though he misses a couple of balls, he will clearly make the team.
The second shortstop trying out is also in 10th grade, and I know him from Little League. He is small, fast, and athletic, but he doesn’t know all the little things I know about baseball, such as ‘how to play for a double play and when to cover third on a bunt.’
The coach only tests how well we can field a ground ball and get it to first.
My turn comes. The ball appears the size of a golf ball, going one hundred miles an hour. I have no flow or rhythm, and I feel like I am playing shortstop for the first time. All the confusion in my mind and the pressure of the years of expectation culminate in a ground ball hitting a small rock in front of me, skidding under my glove, through my legs, and out into the outfield.
The coach hits several more to me, but they are not testing ground balls, but the easy soft hits to build back my confidence. These grounders, however, will not help him decide on his shortstops; the grounder through my legs made that decision for him.
After the tryouts, the coach came over to me and said, ” You’re a good ballplayer, so stay with it, but the team can only carry two shortstops.”
He’s a nice guy, but if he really wanted me on the team, he would’ve asked me to try out for another position.
Dad is quiet and lost in thought on the way home. I expect he is mentally replaying his own tryouts and how he made the team. I am, though, very much in the reality of the moment, and the one thing I most looked forward to this year was not going to happen.
Dad drops me off at the house and returns to work. I go to my room to deal with this week’s events, which have skidded under my glove. Suddenly, everything changed, and beneath my two legs –Toby and baseball – reality was now in the outfield.
During dinner, Dad said that since I won’t be playing baseball after school, I should work at his office and earn some money for college.
“Sure,” I reply, wishing I could create a Plan B.
Before this week, I somehow felt that there was a ‘plan’ and that my life was heading somewhere. Now, I feel the inexorable downward pull of two present forces: gravity and reality. It is as if I had been weightless in outer space and am now burning up reentering the real world. All I see ahead is graduation, community college, and a life at Dad’s insurance company.
I start the following afternoon. Dad runs a small agency that primarily handles homeowners and car insurance. It is located in the old part of downtown, with a cramped and stuffy waiting room featuring the original office furniture my grandfather purchased when he started the agency. Dad’s only contribution to the decoration is his picture of his high school baseball team on his desk.
The only other employee is his administrator, Joan, hired by my grandfather. Joan often confuses Dad and Grandpa. The office and business are overwhelmingly claustrophobic for me.
Joan is elderly and wears her hair in a tight French roll which twists so tightly that the hairs pull her skin. I suppose this style serves as a substitute for a facelift.
She spends the first couple of days telling me all the things Dad did wrong during his first year or two, and I’m sure she expects the same from me.
My job involves picking up client forms, depositing checks, and taking pictures of accidents. It isn’t hard and, thankfully, means that I am mostly out of the office. Dad gives me an advance on my wages to buy a beat-up Toyota. He says buying an old, cheap car is better so that he doesn’t have to pay for collision insurance. I know he doesn’t mean it this way, but the car is a secondary concern in any accident since there is very little Toyota metal between me and the rest of the vehicular world. When I test drive it, I find some comfort as it won’t reach a dangerous speed nor, for that matter, a speeding ticket.
I sometimes drop by Toby’s house when I have a break, but he spends most of his time working on a computer program that will let us send encrypted messages between Stonington and the computers at Academy.
“No one,” he assures me, “will be able to break the code.”
“That’s great,” I counter, wondering what we will write requiring such security.
“The first day of school,” Toby instructs me, “you have to go into the computer lab and install this program in my directory.” He then hands me a USB drive.
“What’s a directory?” I ask.
The school year winds down, and we graduate from 10th. All I can think of as I walk away from Academy High for the summer is that the year had turned out differently and far worse than my Fall expectations. Toby says his dad is going on a business trip to Europe to work on a merger with another bank and has asked Toby to come. After he returns, Toby is signed up for a sports camp, which his dad claims is popular with the Stonington athletes. “Maybe you can learn to play lacrosse,” he tells Toby. I wonder if his dad has noticed Toby’s waddle.
Between the trip and the camp, it turns out Toby will be gone most of the summer. Toby’s mom decides that if Toby isn’t around, she’ll spend the summer in China learning Chinese and touring the country.
Everyone has plans for the summer but me. My errands usually finish mid-afternoon, and Dad says I can do whatever I want to enjoy the summer. That gives me time I don’t need, but I think it is because he doesn’t want to pay me if there isn’t anything to do.
With most afternoons free, I asked the Little League coach if I could help with the team. He was delighted to remember that I knew the game and announced me as the new assistant coach.
I work with the infielders, and our practices end around five. Since there is a lot of daylight left in the day, I bring a summer reading book and sit on the bleachers next to the basketball courts. Between 5 and 6, a group of high schoolers assemble to play and hang around the courts. I find that reading and watching them play and have fun is better than sitting in our living room watching Dad watch TV.
Their basketball games are a strange admixture of athleticism and theater. The players perform, and the surrounding fans shout approvals for baskets or jeer misses. Fouls, as best I can tell, are determined by this jury of peers. Though all contact leads to cries of ‘foul,’ only when the cries reach a loud, audible consensus does play stop for free throws.
Everyone approves of showmanship, especially on dunks and three-pointers. Even on the hottest nights, many wear jackets emblazoned with the name JayHawks. Their jackets are a sign of belonging, and their camaraderie makes my own lack of it all the more poignant. Emotional pain is sharp and hits in the absolute center of your gut.
I watch from the far end of the bleachers, read, and, occasionally, turn a page.
As I approach the bleachers from the Little League field one evening, the basketball rolls out, and as I throw it back, I am asked, “Play hoops?”
“Nah, not really. Baseball.”
“Academy?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
The guy asking these questions, I know from watching, is named Pipes and often plays 2 on 2 with his brother, Dunk.
The game is ‘Winners’, meaning the winning team continues to play, and the losers are replaced with another pair of players. Dunk and Pipes usually lose and spend most of the time on the sidelines.
Dunk got his nickname when he was the first kid in his class to be able to dunk a basketball. He is tall and consists of more obtuse angles than a geometry test. Everyone assumed he’d play basketball since he has always been the tallest in his class. He is as much a prisoner of expectation as I was.
Pipes has missed out on Dunk’s height genes, and the only way he can pass to Dunk is low and often through the legs of an opposing player.
No matter how closely he is guarded, Pipes delivers the ball to Dunk as, through a ‘pipe.’
These two used to be one of the best teams in the city, but the competition got taller and Dunk with his angles now can’t handle the larger and more muscular bodies that push him around. Also, no player needs a jumper to shoot over Pipes.
Pipes looks at me and asks, “How about a game?”
“Sure, but I’m not very good,” I answer.
“Just a friendly. Play with Jackson.” Pipes throws me the ball to inbound.
I dribble but Pipes almost immediately stutter-steps me, spins and takes the ball out of my hands. He passes under Jackson to Dunk who sinks a lay-up.
Pipes says, “Two zip. Loser outs.”
This time I conclude that Jackson will do a better job bringing it downcourt. He maneuvers around Pipes and, as Dunk comes over to cover him, Jackson passes to me. I have a clear shot: 2-2.
This combination of Jackson bringing the ball down, suckering Dunk to cover, and feeding me keeps us somewhat competitive, but, in the end, we lose 22-12. I hang out on the bleachers with Jackson while we watch Dunk and Pipes take on the next team and lose.
Pipes comes over and says, “I was born to play basketball but stopped growing at five feet six inches. Dunk is six feet eight inches but doesn’t really like basketball. How’s that for fairness?”
I counter with my tale of failing to make the baseball team. We find something in common.
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
As the summer slumbers into August, I hang out, after Little League, with the JayHawks. One night, Pipes asks me if I want to join them at their night spot called Smokey’s Ribs.
“I’ll drive,” Pipes offers, and I leave my car at the park.
Smokey’s Ribs is dark, smokey and a combination nightclub and fast-food joint. It is a restaurant with an identity crisis as the fast-food section attracts families looking for an inexpensive, casual dinner of ribs; the nightclub attracts a rough crowd that often gets loud and dangerous. This dysfunctional combination appeals perfectly to those with their own identity issues like the JayHawks.
I certainly can’t say that I am one of the gang, but I enjoy their company, and they tolerate mine. Most of the time, I sit next to Pipes and listen to whatever the JayHawks talk about. They are amusing and entertaining.
But whatever subject they start upon, school, girlfriends, parents, they always end up talking about the same thing in the end: the city’s basketball team, the Knights. I’m not sure how, but they know everything about the Knights players and if they don’t know a statistic, I’m sure they make it up. To help keep their conversation going at Smokey’s, they bring beer which they pass around in a paper bag.
I am not used to beer and one night after one too many sips, I volunteer some thoughts on the Knights.
“There’s no way the Knights will make the playoffs. They’ve traded Williams, their only real playmaker and the owner is too cheap to replace him.”
“What’s that you say?” Dunk is one of the Knights’ most passionate fans.
“What word didn’t you catch?” I respond. “The inside big men can’t make a basket unless someone feeds them the ball. If anyone should know that detail, it’s you.”
I crossed the line; an infidel commenting on the JayHawks’ god and, worse, getting personal.
Dunk, who had a particularly bad day on the court, is mad. “Like, what do you know about it?”
“What I do know,” I add slightly high, “is that Williams sets up most of their scoring, and even with him, the Knights haven’t made the playoffs for the past three years.” I then take another sip from the paper bag as if making an exclamation point.
Dunk starts to call me names and concludes by saying, “You don’t know nothing about nothing.”
Perhaps the most definitive statement in our language and it swishes through the net of my consciousness. I take another swig, but this time it feels like a question mark. I don’t offer any further blasphemy.
Pipes then jumps into the conversation and throws a one-low, hard pass. “Shut up, Dunk.”
Dunk swears at Pipes and yells that if he says that again, “You’ll find your butt on the floor. But then, how would you know, ’cause you’re so short.”
The other JayHawks laugh at this and offer their comments.
Dunk concludes, “This guy’s not worth it anyway. He’s not going to do it.”
Puzzled by this comment, I look to Pipes for an explanation.
“Do what?”
Before Pipes answers, Dunk explains, “Why do you think we let you hang around? Your company? No way. Pipes wants you to sell to the kids at Academy High. He promised our guy who provides that we could become a supplier to Academy. Pipes is counting on you to do it.”
I am caught completely flat-footed and can only manage to repeat, “You mean you want me to sell drugs at Academy?” I turn to Pipes as if this is a personal foul.
Pipe mutters, “I was going to bring it up later. It’s nothing much. Just make some inquiries, and we’ll see what happens.”
The restaurant’s air is still smoky, but the haze in my brain has cleared. Things aren’t going well, but I know I don’t need this.
“No chance, man,” I state.
“Come on. How about we talk about it while driving back to your car? You can make enough to quit that insurance job.”
As quickly as these last two minutes, our whole relationship, built upon a complete misunderstanding, dissolves into thin air.
We argue for a few minutes, and then I stand up and say, “I’m out of here.”
“Wait, hold on. I’ll drive you back.” Pipes adds, “I didn’t mean to force anything. Still friends?”
“How about you just drive me back, and we don’t talk?” I close. We pull out of the parking lot at Smokey’s, and after a block or two, Pipes pleads, “Can’t you just help me out for a couple of weeks? I’m really on the hook with the Jayhawks and our provider.”
“No way.” I suddenly feel the emptiness of nothingness come back with a vengeance. What I thought had been a good relationship was just a good fake. I guess I really don’t know ‘nothing about nothing.’
“Really, Pipes, I’m sorry if this is going to mess up things between you and the Jayhawks, but I’ve got enough problems.”
“Man, I’m dead meat,” Pipes says to himself, slamming his hands on the steering wheel and accidentally stepping harder on the accelerator.
The timing of his outburst couldn’t have been worse, and we pushed to over 50 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone. Consistent with our bad luck, a cop clocks us on his radar. Pipes looks in his rearview mirror in hopes of changing the past, but all that appears are flashing lights.
“Damn!” Pipe again smashes his hands on the steering wheel and hits the accelerator, though this time not by accident.
“Hey, Pipes, what are you doing? You’ve got to stop.”
The police caught up and are right behind us.
“No way, man. I brought the drugs with me tonight to give to you. I thought we were cool and had ourselves a deal. The drugs are in the car.”
“God!” I exhale. Events are moving faster than I can comprehend.
Pipe speeds up and takes a hard right and then a left. The police are right behind us. Pipes then spins onto a freeway ramp and floors the accelerator.
“Stop, Pipes, come on. Don’t do this! Pull over.”
“There’s no way I’m getting caught and doing time.”
I can no longer respond. I am frozen in fear. With each passing second, the scene becomes more vivid and fantastical. My brain wrestles to comprehend that I am doing one hundred miles per hour in a car with drugs and police sirens behind.
Pipes sees an off-ramp and turns at the last second. Tires squeal, and in slow motion, I see the concrete partition of the off-ramp race towards the car.
I never lose consciousness. I am pinned in the passenger seat in shock. I can’t feel anything inside or out. Numb, hurt, but without pain. Lights are flashing, people gesturing, all without sound. I turn my head to see Pipes. His head smashed into the steering wheel in a final gesture of frustration. His eyes are open just like mine but there is a difference. I’m conscious; Pipes is dead.
Zeno’s Paradox
The police jimmy the car door open and carry me to the waiting ambulance. The driver turns on the flashing lights and siren and rushes a life, in balance, to the hospital.
When we arrive at the Emergency Room, the doctors consult amongst themselves and concur that I should have an MRI scan as I need my head examined. I couldn’t agree more.
Afterward, I return to my hospital room and await the results. The pain kicks in with a vengeance, and the nurse offers me something to help both physically and mentally.
Hours later, a doctor enters with a look indicating my life span should be measured in hours. Even though the pain is excruciating, I know I’m not dying. If this is his look for a couple of broken bones, I can’t imagine how he tops it for cancer.
He pronounces one week in traction, followed by five weeks in a cast. After that, a long process of rehabilitation and physical therapy. I have a badly fractured right leg, a broken left ankle, two broken ribs, and several contusions.
The police are the next group to enter and assess my current state. They prod, but only with questions. I decide it doesn’t matter what I tell them about Pipes since he is now doing eternal time. I explain that I began to play basketball with the JayHawks, and they invited me to Smokey’s. I recount how they asked me to sell drugs to Academy High students, but I refused. The police decide I am an unwitting pawn in their plans. Still, being acquitted doesn’t matter, as I have already hit rock bottom. The police don’t press charges, but they offer an opinion that I could have handled the situation better. I’m not sure exactly what they expected me to do, jump from the speeding vehicle?
The broken ribs make it painful to speak, so I just nod and ask for additional painkillers. This time more due to the police questions than the ribs.
The nurses wrap me in plaster and attach wires to the casts so that I can no longer move. I now have exactly what I don’t want – endless time to think.
I watch some television, but I’m mostly sedated and half asleep. During these long hours, I begin to sum up my life. But as I start, I realize that the sum isn’t going to be a very complicated calculation. One thing is clear: I am on a losing streak. Toby’s gone, I didn’t make the baseball team, I work for my dad, my new friends only want me around to sell drugs, and now, my body is totally messed up.
“Yep, there are a lot of negative numbers in the column that I’m adding,” I say in a low enough voice that the nurse thinks I’m moaning in pain.
“What’s the matter?” she asks.
“Oh, nothing,” I mutter. “Yeah, nothing, zero, nada, that’s the sum total.
I then think about baseball and winning and losing streaks; I’ve learned that streaks generally continue with more of the same. However, a baseball team is a collection of players; when one player gets hot, it affects all the others. One hot player turns a team’s losing streak into a winning one.
When we were on a losing streak in Little League, my coach would change players and the batting order until someone got hot, and then watch as it spread to the rest of the team. I’ve seen this several times, and it always works.
Then it hit me: I, me, am a team. A group of interests, talents, and skills? I’ve got to do what my coaches did and change things until I find something that changes my luck and puts the rest of my ‘team’ on a ‘winning streak.’ You don’t get these by playing the same old players, and that’s what I’ve been doing.
Trapped in my wired plaster prison, I suddenly feel free in a way that I haven’t felt in years. And the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve discovered something even more important than getting to a championship game. I now have a ‘hot streak’ system. I understand something more complex than anything Toby signaled.
I wonder if there really is such a simple answer to such a complicated riddle as adolescence. It made my dad going four for four, just a single, lonely moment in time. From now on, I won’t do what others think or want me to do, but what is is hot for me.
One thing, however, is painfully clear – before I can try new things, I must get my body back into shape.
The wires are finally unhooked, and my body cast is removed. It is replaced with a full cast on my right leg and a small left ankle cast. I hobble home on crutches, and I first find something new that requires a lot of sitting. I order a telescope and set up an observatory behind the house. Identifying stars is something I can do at night, and the less I move, the better. During the day, I use the same setup to track local birds which nest or feed in our yard. I finish up my summer reading list, listen to classical music, and, since my arms are okay, lift weights.
Five weeks later, my cast comes off, and I make my first of many visits to our local physical therapist, Mr. Bodinski. He gives me some exercises, but says the best exercise is to take a YMCA swimming physical therapy program. He hands Mom the brochure.
We call, and the next class starts the following day. I don’t know how to swim, and mention this to the YMCA receptionist. She assures me that the class is for physically challenged kids and that all the exercises are in the pool’s shallow end. Drowning won’t be a problem. Mom drops me off and says she’ll return to pick me up in an hour. I enter the Y, follow directions to the locker room, and, after changing, proceed out to the swimming pool.
The early kids grab the chairs around the pool, and the rest of us stand awkwardly in our bathing suits, pretending not to look at one another. During this wait, one kid goes to the edge and drops his right toe into the water. He makes a face as if the water is cold, but doesn’t volunteer any information. No one has the nerve to break the ice and ask him, but our collective curiosity is piqued. After a discreet interval, I also drift nonchalantly to the edge to drop my right toe into the water. As I do, my weakened left ankle gives way, and my body follows my toe. In front of these younger, physically challenged kids, I begin to drown. They look fixedly at me and, yes, are delighted at the distraction. I flail madly to keep my head just above the water line. My face searches theirs for assistance, but they remain transfixed at the entertainment. I feel myself going under, perhaps for the last time, when my foot hits the five-foot bottom of the pool. Securing both feet, I stand up and suck up needed oxygen. They continue to stare. To kill the embarrassment, I, again, flail the water, but this time pretending to drown, leading them to think the first was a performance as well.
As I emerge for the second time, I ask the kids who have now come to the pool’s edge, “Was that drowning better?”
Flickers of life appear in their eyes, and some begin to giggle. Gradually, an awareness spreads that I am having fun, and the giggles turn into hysterics. One of the kids jumps in and, too, pretends to drown.
After his effort, he jumps up and asks me, “How was that?”
“Good,” I reply, recovering my composure, “but you must wave your arms to make the drowning more convincing.”
Others jump into the pool, and they proceed to drown. Some decide they need to raise their hands to show how many times they have submerged below the surface.
The entire shallow end of the pool is filled with drowning kids, and most are so realistic that it would be impossible for a lifeguard to determine which kid to rescue first.
The instructor emerges from the office and yells angrily, “Everyone, out of the pool. Don’t you kids know you could drown without a lifeguard on duty?”
I guess that because I’m the oldest and was the first to ‘drown,’ the other kids think I’m cool. The instructor studies me carefully, as he suspects I am the ringleader and lead troublemaker.
“Make two lines and give yourself plenty of space,” he commands.
We began with leg lifts, then squats, and other exercises, but it’s boring, and the kids can’t stop drowning and look at me for approval.
The instructor is not pleased with these theatrics. “Attention, everyone, there will be no more drownings in my class.” To make sure that I am not there to encourage them, the instructor hands me a kickboard and points to an empty lane away from the group.
“But I can’t swim and might drown,” I plea, but he doesn’t appear particularly concerned.
I hold onto the kickboard for dear life and begin to kick. Slowly, I move forward, and the depth of the water increases. If I let go of the kickboard, I will surely drown. At this point, I also know that the instructor will tell everybody to ignore me.
On my tentative first lap, I picture the next day’s headlines: ‘Boy Drowns at Y as Instructor Tells his Class to Ignore.’ Well, that will serve him right even if I am gone. I reach the end of the pool with great relief.
After a couple more laps, my legs are in serious pain, but I can’t wimp out in front of these kids. I continue in what is the longest hour of my life. As I enter the locker room afterward to change, the kids joke with me, and for the first time in a month, I’m back having fun.
The class meets every day for three weeks. The following day, even though I line up with the other kids in the shallow end for exercises, the instructor gives me the kickboard and points back to that dreaded, empty lane.
I sense he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, so I start, once again, just kicking down and back the length of the pool.
The pain in my legs hits immediately as I begin to kick and is so great that when I look to the far end of the pool, the amount of pain necessary to reach it is overwhelming. I can only manage by using the lines on the bottom of the pool to mark my painful progress. Each distance I set is a function of the pain I can withstand.
Last year in math, our teacher explained a concept known as Zeno’s paradox. She contends that a runner can never reach a finish line because distance may be divided into an infinite number of subdivisions, and no one can ever reach an infinite number. All I know is that with this much pain, the only way I can reach a goal is to divide it into an infinite number of subdivisions and then struggle to reach each. And only by reaching each can I get to the end. Zeno’s paradox is really my paradox.
But if these painful laps lasted for an hour, I would’ve stopped coming to the class or rejoined the others doing leg lifts.
After eight to ten painful laps, the pain ebbs, and a gradual surge of strength and well-being grows inside. My breathing slows and becomes deep and rhythmic; time slows, and the laps pass quickly; my heart seems to switch into a higher gear. I am in the zone and feel I can kick forever. Perhaps this is due to my pain releasing a surge of endorphins, but what does that matter?
More profound is that instead of having my consciousness consumed by the struggle to make each distance, my mind undergoes a psychological change due to physiological changes. My mind separates from my body. Before, my body’s pain overwhelmed my conscious mind; now, my mind and body have become separate and a complete duality. My body continues in a steady state as my conscious mind becomes subsumed into a state that floats effortlessly on water, for want of a better metaphor. I have no concerns about schedules, classes next year, or my failures. Instead, my mind becomes an empty air pocket like a jellyfish on the ocean’s waves. I can’t explain it very well, and most people, who have never felt it, think I’m describing a dream-like state, but that isn’t it. In dreaming, you are kept captive by whatever your unconscious subjects you to as its prisoner. Your unconscious captures your body so that only your eyes can move, and then this very primitive part of your brain talks to you like some scared child. Just as when I was in traction in my hospital room, facing the only TV, and a six-year-old roommate controlled the remote.
As I’m kicking laps, I have this euphoric feeling that I’m not a prisoner of my unconscious. Both conscious and subconscious minds appear to converse as I might with Toby on a long walk home from the baseball field. It’s an unfettered conversation that lets me think of things I’ve never thought of before.
For instance, I start thinking about my summer reading. In years past, summer reading and the requisite book report were an agony to endure. Now, during my laps, I think about these books and how they complement one another. I visualize how the characters interact, and their lives become my lives.
I see relationships between the books and characters, and my essay on the summer reading emerges right in front of me as I kick back and forth. The essay writes itself, and I know exactly what points I wish to make and have examples from each book to support them. For the first time, the essay is easy – I just need to type the words.
When I return to the shallow end after what seemed like only minutes, a hand grabs the kickboard from me and tells me the swimming hour is over.
I check at the desk about free swim times and find I can come back each evening from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Mom worries that I am overdoing my swimming therapy, and we return to Mr. Bodinski, who tests my leg and ankle.
“Looks like everything is coming along fine. The more exercise, the better.”
In free swim, you swim down one side of a lane and back the other side. The lane you’re in depends on how quickly you swim. Since I’m just kicking, I use the slowest lane, and these two hours pass as quickly as the hour in the morning.
After the three-week course, Mr. Bodinski checks me once more.
“He is pretty much back to normal, though he’ll have a slight limp.”
I’m unsure what he means by ‘normal,’ as I feel completely different after these weeks. I am certainly not the same as I was before. Since he is a physical therapist and not a shrink, I don’t discuss my other recovery.
One night before school starts, the community swim team comes at eight to practice. The lifeguard closes the pool, but the coach says I can continue to kick in my lane, and the team will use the other five.
I have become accustomed to being jarred out of my comatose state by the lifeguard telling me it’s time to go, but this time, it seems especially brief, and instead, the swim coach is yelling at me to stop.
“Hey, stop a minute! Hey, stop!” He shouts from the side of my lane.
I am slow as ever to emerge from my mental state, so he grabs my shoulder at the next turn.
“What’s your name?”
Wrenched from my swimming trance, I am irritated; I didn’t think I was bothering the swim team. If they need the lane, they can just ask.
“Do you swim for a team?”
“What?” It takes time to emerge from my subconscious fog and fathom the question.
“Team. What team do you swim for?”
“You mean a swim team?”
He looks at me and wonders if I’m one of the mentally challenged who come to the Y.
“Yes, do you swim for a swim team?” he asks again, slowly articulating each word.
“No, I’m just swimming to help build up my leg muscles from an accident this summer.”
“No kidding?” He ponders.
Now it is my turn to be curious. “How come? Why?”
“Well,” he replies, “while you kick laps, some of the team have been in the next lane and, amazingly, you’ve been keeping pace. Quite remarkable.”
“I am just doing some laps for my legs,” I say, which seems, after I say it, quite beside the point.
“Have you ever tried freestyle? Do you have any times?” The coach queries.
I feel complimented and indeed pleased to be asked. Of course, all kids have the dream of catching a home-run ball in the bleachers, and the manager then yells, “Sign that kid up!”
So, I join the swim team, but as I’ve mentioned, I never learned to swim. My first efforts at using my arms looked like my drowning exhibition on the first day of therapy class. The coach works with me before and after the workouts, and we stick to freestyle to keep things as simple as possible.
There is a lot of kidding around on the team, and during these first two weeks, a lot of that joking is directed at me. The team decides I excel at the 100-yard flail, an event in which judges decide the winners based on both times and the amount of water splashed. They joke that I should receive extra artistic points for such added touches as losing my goggles during the dive, missing my turns, or, as they say is my specialty, getting my arms caught on the lane lines.
But it isn’t just me on the receiving end, and more importantly, the kidding is really meant to be funny. It is easy to be the butt of their joke, and each victim laughs along with the team. On the baseball team, it was different as everyone depends on everyone else to win, and there was always a hint of criticism in a crack. You feel you’ve let the whole team down if you make an error. Hey, my dad still blames his team’s pitchers for the championship loss.
Swimming isn’t like baseball because swimmers compete for times against other swimmers. If I screw up a turn or get tangled in a lane line, it really doesn’t make any difference to my teammates. The team is there for friendship and camaraderie, which takes a lot of pressure off competing and makes being on a team more enjoyable.
Now that I think about it, the JayHawks did a lot of kidding around as well, but it had a social edge and was often mean-spirited. Look at Pipes. He only got involved with drugs because he felt the pressure to make money for the JayHawks. The only way you move up in a gang is to push someone else down, and most of their kidding reflects this.
Although the team workouts are fun, I struggle to get into my zone, and I admit I’m addicted to my endorphin fix. I ask the coach if I can stay afterward practice. My teammates have never heard of anything so stupid.
I finish the summer swimming, writing my summer reading essays, and working on my Toyota.
When I drive up to campus on the first day of 11th grade, I feel completely different from the way I did the year before. Then, I was familiar with myself, but the school was new and strange. This year, I walk with a slight limp along the long-covered walkways as the wind drives rain through. It is Academy High that feels familiar, but I am changed and unfamiliar. Still, somehow know that I am more ‘me’ than before.
Everyone, of course, has heard that I was involved in a car accident involving drugs and a car chase. Everyone has seen the newspaper’s front-page picture of me wedged in the front seat with Pipes dead beside me. Most people think I have fallen in with a bad group, and they do what most people do when confronted with something that challenges their perception: they avoid the issue and the person, and assume the worst.
In previous years, I might have worried about what everyone thought and tried to find ways to convince them otherwise. But, over the summer, I discovered during my endless miles of kicking that I enjoy my own company, and when you discover something as important as that, you no longer worry about what others think. I also discover that I am now a better friend to others and, more importantly, a better friend to myself.
Begin to Be
The start of school doesn’t feel the same without Toby, so I call Toby’s dad in the city. He says that Toby is out, and they are going to Stonington the following day. I should call during the Christmas holidays as Toby will be away until then.
I somehow need to explain both the accident and the swimming to Toby, and I’m frustrated that I no longer have Toby as a confidant.
I call at Christmas, but Toby’s dad says that the bank is involved in a year-end deal, and he can’t drive Toby up. Instead, he invites me down to New York City to visit and says he has bank tickets to the Knights. My folks offer to drive me into the city and say they will do some Christmas shopping while I hang out with Toby.
Dad fights the holiday traffic and is not in a good mood when he pulls up in front of Toby’s Park Avenue building. A doorman opens the car door, and I wait in the foyer while he calls up to the apartment. The foyer is dark and wood-paneled with crystal chandeliers. Toby’s character is farmhouse, not pretension. I take the elevator to the penthouse, where Toby warmly welcomes me at the door. His dad is on a call, and we head down the hall to Toby’s room.
“Too long,” I offer.
“Yep, way too long,” he responds.
As expected, the floor of Toby’s room is covered with printouts, and his desk has two computers.
Toby looks at me and notices changes in me as I do in him. “Someone sent me the article and picture of your accident this summer. Tell me.”
“Long story,” I start. “You know the other guy was killed in the accident.”
“Yeah, so I heard. Who was he?”
“Pipes, but other than that, I’m not really sure.”
We talk for a couple of hours, just catching up and regaining the comfort of having someone who listens and doesn’t judge. Toby describes Stonington, his roommate, and classes.
“Nah, I don’t like it. Stonington wants to fill up your entire day and doesn’t believe kids might have something constructive to do on their own.”
About noon, Toby’s dad comes in and says that it is time to head to the Knights game, and we can have lunch at the arena. He calls his driver, and we are dropped off at the VIP entrance. After lunch, we walk closer and closer to the courts. I can’t believe we have seats right behind the Knights’ bench. Toby’s dad says these are the bank’s tickets, and he can use them whenever he wants.
The Knights play terribly and are well behind at the end of the half. Late in the third period, the Knights’ center comes out of the game for a breather and yells at the rest of the team, “Can’t any of you guys feed me the ball?”
I hear his words, which bring me back to the JayHawks and that last night at Smokey’s. I was right that they couldn’t’ feed their center without Williams. I was wrong to have said anything about it to Dunk. But right, as saying so allowed me to discover why Pipes was so friendly, still, in the end, wrong, as somehow my comment led indirectly to Pipes’s death. How is a kid, or anyone, for that matter, supposed to figure these confusions out?
The driver delivers us back to the apartment, and we arrive just before my parents. When they walk in, Toby’s dad offers them something to eat and drink.
“You have to understand,” Toby’s dad says, “that the world is getting more competitive every day. For instance, I had someone in my office today who has an impressive Ivy League transcript but has been looking for a job for six months. These days, you have got to struggle to get ahead anyway you can.”
He continues, “I mean, I tell Toby that he has to move up to the advanced section, even if it means more homework. You must seize every opportunity that comes along if you’re going to secure a good job. Now, I can help Toby with my contacts and business associates, but it will still be tough.”
On the drive back, my parents are quiet. I’m sure Dad and Mom consider Toby’s dad’s comments and what he says Toby needs to do to succeed. They also know that I’ll just join the insurance company after community college. We don’t have enough money to be complicated.
Before I started swimming, I was a good student, but homework would often take me hours. As soon as I opened my math book, I thought about everything but the math problems in front of me. After my workout, I concentrate on my homework and finish much faster.
My folks worry about this and believe my swimming is interfering with my homework, whereas the truth is just the opposite. They tell me I should stop swimming so I can spend more time on homework and have a chance at getting into college.
“See.” I show them my homework folder.
But they respond with, “Your 11th grade year is the most important one. You need good grades if you’re going to have any chance for a scholarship.”
Though they think it is good for me to be on a team and that it certainly is better than hanging around the park, they also think I am overdoing it and use the word ‘escaping.’
“Escaping?” I protest. “That is exactly the wrong word.” But, again, adults see most things their kids do as half empty rather than half full and, perhaps, their kids the same way.
Dad decides to make this an issue and insists that I set up meetings with my teachers to discuss my ‘homework problem.’
“Why do your parents want to have a parent-teacher conference?” my teachers ask.
We set up appointments one afternoon after school. Each teacher assures my parents that I am doing extremely well and that my homework is consistently finished and at an A level.
Instead of feeling reassured, Dad is upset that he has taken the afternoon off for no reason. He is still upset at dinner and is on edge, waiting for a reason to lash out.
“Even if you are finishing your homework,” he declares, “you should do more.”
“More what?” I ask, “More homework? I do whatever they assign in class.”
“You should ask for more since you spend too much time at the pool.”
“First, that’s crazy. Why would I want to do that?”
“Well, working is better than wasting all your time swimming back and forth in the pool. Where’s that going to get you? Nowhere. It will just get you back where you started.”
“I like to swim.” I know this argument isn’t going to hold water. “By the way, where did being on the baseball team get you?”
I wish I hadn’t said it as soon as it came out.
“What’s wrong with selling insurance? It puts the food you just ate on the table. It was good enough for your grandfather and good enough for me. Where do you come off with your attitude?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say, but something is festering in Dad, and he isn’t going to let the argument drop. “Do you think I like having people yell at me all day? I don’t do it because I like it, but because I have to.”
“Well, it’s time for me to leave and do my ‘extra’ homework,” I say and retreat to my room to escape the conversation.
Mom comes up later and says that Dad is having problems at work and sometimes needs to let off steam at home.
But, if you ask me, this is just another thing parents do backward. Why should the family be the one that takes the brunt for problems at work? Work is less, or should be less, important than family, right?
I make the Fall semester honor roll for the first time, which finally puts to rest the homework matter. There is no further discussion about swimming after school.
“Going out for the high school team?” the swim coach asks during the winter semester.
“I don’t know. Do you think I can make it?”
He turns, shaking his head. Ever since that first day, he has been convinced I am a little soft-headed. Still, in my defense, I never swam with the goal of making the team, as I did with baseball.
I ask the high school coach if I can try out. He asks my times and looks bemused.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Tryouts are next Wednesday after school.”
I make varsity and swim number one in the 800- and 1500-yard freestyle events. At most workouts, the coach just lets me swim laps in a lane on my own, which couldn’t please me more. After 10 or 15 minutes of every workout, I am back in my swim state, and now, using my arms, I feel I can swim forever.
I have never felt as comfortable doing any sport before, not even when I had perfectly executed my baseball ‘signature move.’ Sometimes, after swimming three to four miles, I feel more energetic than I did at the start of practice. We read Thoreau in English class, and one day, the teacher asks the class what he means by, ‘Sometimes on Walden Pond, I cease to live and begin to be.’
I raise my hand to answer. I don’t think I answered well as it is one of those things that is hard to explain unless you’ve felt it.
During our Spring semester meets, my teammates treat me as a valuable though eccentric team member. They like the fact that I am stupid enough to swim long distances and find that, since I don’t lose a race all season, I can be counted on to help win meets. I like the team and like being on the team, but swimming is something I do for myself. As a result, I never feel a need to compete. When you do something for yourself, beating someone isn’t very important.
Summer nears and I know Dad wants me to work another summer at his office. I need to come up with a Plan B. Going to camp or travel isn’t an option as my parents worry about the cost of college.
I apply to a local country club as a lifeguard and ask my coach to write a recommendation letter. I interview and am offered the afternoon – evening shift six days a week and share the news with the folks. Mom is delighted, as I think she connects working at Dad’s office with my problems and accident the summer before. Dad is disappointed as he is already picturing us working together.
The summer starts and the routine is perfect. I sleep until ten, do a chore or two and get to the pool by lunchtime. The pool provides a free lunch at the Snack Shack, and I hang out with the wait staff and Cheryl, who works in the kitchen.
The country club kids are obnoxious as kids go and always test how much they can get away with. I want to throw the kids out of the pool for a day, but the manager tells me that the parents will flip and feel we are mistreating their wonderful children.
“You have to be engaged and creative,” the manager directs me. At first, I bribe the kids with ice cream sandwiches out of my pay if they behave. This only encourages them, and I soon find I am not making any money. Eventually, we form a truce, and I actually like most of the kids by the end of the summer.
The job’s real rewards come at the end of each evening. Once the pool closes at 8:00, I clean the dressing rooms and empty the garbage from the Snack Shack. Then, I have the pool to myself. Most nights, I swim until 11:00, but several times, the security guard had to come down from the clubhouse at midnight to tell me to go home.
I ask Cheryl to go out on a couple dates, but she, apparently, has lots of relatives visiting from out of town. With little social life, I swim laps for hours each night while most of my classmates drive their cars back and forth on the main drag in town. Same rhythm, different worlds.
On the second day of summer, an 8-year-old kid approaches my lifeguard stand.
“Who are you? You’re not the same lifeguard we had last summer.” He asks.
“No reason I should be, is there?” I share my name.
“This makes the third summer that we’ve had different lifeguards,” he observes.
“Anything I should know about you guys? What’s your name?”
“Harrisson. Harrisson with two Rs.”
“Some name,” I observe. “Can I call you Harry? That name has two Rs.”
“Of course not. You have to call me Harrisson, just like all of my friends.”
“That’s a mouthful. How many S’s?” I ask.
“Two Rs and two Ss. Our family fought with Lafayette in the American Revolution.”
“Well, that’s interesting.” I get down off my lifeguard chair to help a mother set up a playpen for her child. Harrisson follows me.
“Yep. The Revolutionary War. That makes our family one of the oldest in America.”
“Has your family done anything lately?”
“You mean you don’t know who I am? My dad’s president of the country club, and our family owns the largest company in town, Consolidated Distributors.”
“Wow.” I say, finally getting into the proper spirit as the collapsible playpen springs open and pinches my finger. “Ouch!”
The mother puts padding on the floor of the playpen, then toys, and then a baby.
“My dad does a lot of community service stuff and talks regularly with the mayor and the police chief.”
“Is that good?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well, what if they’re calling to tell him he hasn’t paid a parking ticket or something?”
“Oh, that never happens because he has a special medallion on his car that tells the police that he doesn’t need to put money in the parking meters, and he can’t get parking or speeding tickets.”
“Doesn’t sound very fair to me, especially since your family sounds rich.”
“Sure, we’re rich. But Daddy says you don’t get rich by paying taxes or parking tickets. He says that the whole town collapses if he moves his company out of town.”
I look down into the crib and the baby who, though imprisoned, is unaware of her plight.
“And just what is it that you do, Harrisson?”
“Oh, not much. Sometimes, I go on vacation to our family’s vacation house.”
“Well, Harrisson,” I say, accentuating the Rs and Ss, “you’ve got a great setup. I’m sure your dad is already preparing you to take over his business.”
“You betcha.”
As I walk back to my lifeguard chair, I imagine Harrisson as a leading local businessman and whether I should nurture the relationship to sell him insurance in 20 years. I decide I’d rather not.
At the end of summer, I reduce my swimming as my coach wants me to work on speed rather than endurance. The regionals are coming up, and he believes I should do well. Coach assures me that my endurance will not be a problem.
I have mixed feelings about cutting back since I only swim because of how it makes me feel. Yet, I am curious about how well I might do, so I agree with the coach, and don’t swim for a week.
I won both the 800-meter and 1500-meter races. The coach claims that I was pulling away from the competition at the end of each race and that I should’ve started my kick earlier.
Don’t Have a Clue
One morning during the last week of August, I hear a car pull up outside and a knock at our front door. Recognizing Toby’s voice, I crawl out of bed and head downstairs.
“Hey, slug,” Toby offers. “What a waste of humanity – sleeping in until ten.”
“Actually, I usually sleep later.”
“Alas, worse than I thought.”
“At least I’m working for a living this summer. Anyway, no need here for a guardian angel.”
“Too hard a job for me, anyway.”
Beneath this banter, I sense Toby needs to talk. Since I have to work, I suggest, “I’ve got to go over early to the club. Want to come along? You’ll get along with these kids at the country club since you’re now a preppie. They’ll be impressed that you go to Stonington.”
We pull the Toyota into an employee parking spot. Toby remains quiet for a couple of minutes and then asks, “When does Academy High start?”
“Two weeks. You still have a couple of more weeks, don’t you?”
“Not now. I’m coming back to Academy.”
“What?”
“Yeah, long story.”
We order lemonade and grilled cheese. Cheryl brings out the order and introduces herself to Toby.
I haven’t seen Toby since early summer, and I thought he planned to go to camps and travel with his dad.
“How was camp?” I ask.
“Didn’t go,” he says, looking into his lemonade.
“I thought you liked that one you went to last summer. You know, tennis in the morning, an afternoon polo match followed by a light quiche supper.”
Toby laughs. “Didn’t go. Dad was let go from the bank last June. His new boss at the bank used the expression ‘made superfluous by a reorganization.”
“Hey, sorry,” I offer.
“Superfluous, expendable, whatever term you want, Dad lived for that bank. It was all he ever talked about. Mom once said that one of the reasons they split up was that he put the bank above everything else, including and especially family.”
Toby clearly has a lot on his mind. “It was really strange. He just came home one evening after I had moved back into the city for the summer and muttered, ‘I’ve been let go.’ Just like that, everything changed. Dad had to cancel camp and I would have moved back up here, but Mom was with her sister in Indiana. I stayed in the apartment with him and worked on my program. He said that he now has time to do things with me.”
“You’ve been with him all summer?”
“Yeah. At first, he said everything’s fine. He has lots of friends in the business whom he has helped over the years, and they’ll find him a suitable position. At first, he dresses every morning for interviews and lunches, but by July, he dresses only when he has an appointment. On the other days, he concludes, ‘What’s the point?’ On free days, he tries to find things for us to do. We go to a couple of baseball games, but since he can no longer use the bank’s tickets, he complains that the prices are too high and the seats are too far from the field.
While we’re together, he gets frustrated and angry. After a couple of outbursts, I tell him that I’d rather just work on my computer stuff.
Toby goes over to get another lemonade, and Cheryl hands it to him, mentioning she’ll be around until the end of September.
“Once in a while, Dad tries to understand what I am doing and suggests maybe we go into business together. But when I start to explain, he gets a distant look on his face and switches back to complaining about his once-friends.”
“He realizes that all the favors and networks he has dedicated his life to have come to nothing. Other than work, he has no other interests. By late July, he starts drinking at lunch and continues while watching afternoon movies. At dinner, he’s shot and falls asleep during the evening news. Around 11 pm, I wake him and get him into bed.”
“Sometimes at lunch or dinner, he’ll yell, ‘I can’t believe I gave Frank his first job at the bank. Now, he won’t even return my phone calls. How’s that for gratitude?”
“One day, one of his friends calls and asks if he is in. Since I know he is too sauced to get on the phone, I say, ‘he’s out, can I take a message?’”
“The friend asks if I am Toby. ‘How is your father? You know I’ve set up some interviews for him, but your father is very opinionated about how things should be done. He still thinks he can get a senior management job.”
The friend continues, ‘Things are different now, and they’re looking for people who know technology and marketing. But I’ll keep trying. Please have your dad give me a call.”
“I tell Dad the next morning when he is in relatively good shape, but Dad responds, ‘There’s no way I’m going to call him back. After all I did for him, he set me up for an interview as a branch manager. I’m not going to lower myself to a job like that. Last year, I had all the branches reporting to me.”
“So, Dad and I are living in a fancy Park Avenue apartment, and our lives are going in opposite directions. I’m working on an encryption program that is incredibly interesting, and Dad’s going downhill fast.”
Toby finishes his 2nd lemonade and checks his watch. “Once, while sailing with friends, we drifted too close to shore and got caught on a sandbar. I watched as the boat was dashed to pieces by the waves. If there’s nothing inside, once the hull goes, things bust up pretty quickly.”
“I call Mom, and she returns from Indiana. She comes down to the city, speaks to Dad, and I pack up and come back here. Dad doesn’t argue and, in fact, is probably relieved that I’m no longer around to witness his drunken tirades. So, there you have it, my summer.”
Toby concludes, “I’ve gone from having a rich, powerful father to one who is an unemployed drunk; from being an honors student at a prestigious prep school to entering Academy as a senior all in two months. I was looking forward to interviewing at some top schools this Fall, and now, with money tight, I may be joining you at State next year.”
We clean up the table of paper plates and empty cups. I start work, but tell Toby I’ll come by his house afterward.
When I arrive, Toby’s mom has her omnipresent sandwiches ready, and I grab one with each hand. She congratulates me on my swimming success, which she follows in the local newspaper. The previous week, the paper featured a picture of me in mid-stroke, face down in the water, winning the regionals.
“Do you think it was a good shot?” I ask.
“If you’re going to swim freestyle,” she responds, “shave a picture of something on the back of your head.”
“I disagree,” Toby adds. “I think it might be one of your best pictures ever.”
During the last few weeks of summer, I hang out at Toby’s after work. It’s great to spend time with him again, and as we’re about to enter our senior year, it reminds me of the earlier and better times.
Toby’s desk, as usual, is covered with his latest programming project.
“What’s all this about?” I ask, picking up a printout.
Toby has his look. “Look at this. Really strange. Why do these email messages all go through these server addresses outside of Washington? See? Every message has this IP address.”
I look at a page filled with indecipherable numbers and letters.
“I think the feds are monitoring every email,” he concludes. “It’s just a huge wiretap. I’m going to devise an encryption technique that they’ll never be able to crack.” He holds up evidence of whatever he is talking about, but, truly, it is just a big sheet of paper covered in nonsense. I nod and take his word for it.
“Toby, you need a life.”
Toby’s dad needs to pick up Toby’s stuff at Stonington and says he should arrive before dinner.
“When’s your dad coming?” I ask after dinner.
“Should’ve been here an hour ago.”
I finish my reading, and as Toby shows no signs of coming out from behind his computer screen, I head downstairs where Toby’s mom is playing solitaire.
“How about some gin rummy?” she asks.
She wins both games before I get up and yell to Toby that the club is open on weekends during September, and I my job starts at nine.
“Have a good weekend. See you at school on Monday,” he yells as I leave.
Toby calls the next morning and leaves a message that I should call him at his New York number when I finish work.
I call at 5:00 p.m., and Toby’s mom answers, which surprises me as she doesn’t like going into the city. I am even more surprised to hear her voice, which is choked by tears.
“Thanks for calling,” she stutters. “Toby’s gone out to get something to eat, but something awful has happened.”
She pauses a minute to compose herself. I have never known Toby’s mom to be in an emotional state. “Toby’s dad had an accident on the highway returning from Stonington last night. He hit a retaining wall and was killed instantly. The report says he was intoxicated.” She barely gets this last sentence out before she sobs uncontrollably.
The first time a person faces such a catastrophe, they find only the banal words “I’m so sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I hear her stifled sobs and shuddered breaths.
Unsure what else to say, I ask, “Would it help if I drove in?”
“No. We’re coming home in the morning. If you could drop by sometime tomorrow, Toby would appreciate it. Thanks.”
Sunday is an extremely hot Indian summer day, and the pool is busier than at any other time of the summer. We are also one lifeguard short, and the kids are at their snobbiest as they have started school and are relearning what they forgot during the summer. It is late when I finally clean up the locker rooms and garbage.
“Sorry, I’m late, but I just finished work. Is it too late to come by?”
Toby’s mom says they are just getting ready for dinner and asks if I would join them. I call Mom to let her know.
When I walk in, Toby looks up from his computer with a glazed, searching look.
“Maybe it’s better this way.”
“Of course not.” But I’m not sure.
“He went downhill so fast…” Toby says as his voice trails off. “It makes you wonder what was really there.”
These were questions he must have been asking himself all day.
We have dinner. In trying to keep the conversation going, I ask, “How is your essay on colonial America coming for our U.S. History class?”
“Haven’t started.”
I shouldn’t add it, but I should do. “A draft of the essay is due tomorrow.”
“Yeah, gotcha.”
Seeing Toby the next day at school surprises me. He doesn’t look older but acts older, as if he has added a layer of concerns that someone our age doesn’t normally have. I wonder, sometimes, if we age like trees, just accumulating layer upon layer of concerns.
He doesn’t have a draft of his essay for class or the final paper for the following Friday.
“I hoped,” I mention as we leave class, “that you would have called me for help with the paper.”
“If I wanted help, I would’ve.”
Toby doesn’t do his homework during the Fall term, but since Stonington is way ahead of ours in curriculum, Toby has the luxury to coast on his Stonington knowledge. Instead, he spends all of his time working either in the computer lab or at home on his program.
I start swimming again every night and don’t get over to Toby’s very often. He is so absorbed that there isn’t much to do except play cards with his mom. Now, I don’t fault him for this as I am the last person to complain about someone being obsessively compulsive.
One Saturday, I drop by and as I walk in, Toby declares, “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” I ask, hoping he has finally finished his program.
Toby answers, “The life insurance company determined that my dad crashed in anticipation of self-inflicted death. In other words, they say it was no accident and Dad committed suicide. They will contest any insurance settlement. There goes my last chance to afford college. Mom has no money. Looks like I’m going to have to stay home and go to community.”
I don’t know what to say. I consider describing my idea of ‘just playing your hot players,’ but when I think about how I’ll explain it, words get in the way.
I only offer, “Things will turn around for you. Something good will happen.” Yes, banal.
I pick up one of his printed documents and start to peruse it.
“Toby, just a suggestion, but shouldn’t you work on things a little less weird than this?”
For the first time in two months, his look flickers in his eyes. “This encryption stuff that you can’t figure out, I understand. Everything else, I haven’t a clue.”
So, when did I find out about it? I knew something was up when some of the kids talked about their permanent records before class. But during homeroom, Principal Phluster announces the details over the school’s loudspeaker system.
“Last Friday evening,” he begins, “someone broke into our school’s computers and encrypted all the student files. If anyone has any information about this incident, please get a hall pass from your teacher and come to my office immediately.”
How amusingly ironic that we need a hall pass to provide information on a break-in.
Of course, I know who did it and mumble under my breath, “Toby, you’ve done it now.”
“Do you wish to contribute something?” my homeroom teacher asks.
“Nope. Just clearing my throat. You know, flu season.”
I catch up with Toby in the hall and put my hand on his shoulders. He jumps.
“A little skittish, are we? Who’d you think I was, Phluster?”
“Have they talked to you yet?” he asks.
“Nope. Will they?” I respond.
“I logged in on Friday and…”
“Listen,” I interrupt. “How about you don’t tell me anything about it?”
“About what?”
At any such crime scene, the forensics team gets called in to search for clues. The joke around school is that they have dusted the keyboards for fingerprints and determined half the school are suspects.
We watch these guys work, but you can tell they are hopelessly lost. They want to set up a crime scene with yellow ribbons and maybe an outline of a body painted on the sidewalk. They desperately want to find a weapon in a bush or a garbage can. The fact that there is no weapon, no victim, and no crime scene is incredibly frustrating for them.
We hear that the encryption program has not only encrypted everyone’s permanent record but also itself. The only way the investigation team can understand how to de-encrypt the records is to decrypt the program. There is no way around this rather vicious circle, which causes them to run around in, well, rather vicious circles.
But the most irritating aspect of the case is that nothing is stolen. All the information and files are still there, they just can’t be opened. It is as if someone reports that their car is stolen but, in fact, they have just lost their car keys. You can’t very well tell the police that your car is stolen when it sits in your driveway, and the police won’t come if you report that you’ve lost your car keys. No, the forensics team is not happy campers.
The newspapers cover the police reports, and on that first afternoon, a reporter shows up, interviews several people, and writes the headlines for the Tuesday morning paper.
Permanent Files ‘Lost’ at Academy High.
Remember all those times in school when the teacher threatened you that some indiscretion would go on your permanent record? Indeed, this reporter does. Remember thinking that your permanent record must be on something, well, permanent? Perhaps a stone tablet? Last Friday evening at Academy High, a student, perhaps wishing to have some grades or suspensions expunged from their record, converted the school’s permanent files to an encrypted and unusable format.
The student remains unidentified; however, Lieutenant Goodman, who is heading up the case, reports, “We have many promising leads and expect to solve this case within the next twenty-four hours.”
In answer to this reporter’s query, Principal Phluster responds, “Last year, our school converted to the latest paperless document management system. This move saves taxpayers thousands of dollars on paper and printing costs. So, we don’t have any paper copies now as backup for our students’ records.”
This institutional amnesia may bring a welcome new beginning to many students, but also a loss for others. Until the files are recovered, no transcripts or other information can be sent to colleges. When this reporter asked the students how they feel about it, the responses most frequently heard are “cool” and “great.”
Lieutenant Goodman has requested that the FBI’s computer crime expert be brought in to assist in recovering these records, but until they are, these students have the chance that many of us only dreamed about – the chance to start over with a clean slate.
On Tuesday morning, my homeroom teacher receives a note saying that I am wanted in Phluster’s office. She fills out the necessary Hall Pass.
As I enter his office, I see the two policemen handling the investigation.
“This is Lieutenant Goodman and Lieutenant Malhomme,” Phluster introduces the two as his head bobs. Then, turning to the police, he offers, “he is Toby’s good friend.”
They get right to the point. “Do you know a student named Toby?” asks Lieutenant Malhomme.
I thought we might have skipped this question as I was introduced as a friend, but these guys like to go slow and cover their bases.
“Yes, I do.” I want to impress them with my cooperativeness.
“Is this the Toby you know?” he asks, and then he shows me a picture of Toby from our 10th-grade yearbook.
It isn’t the picture of Toby I would’ve used, but as I’ve said before, Toby has always looked like Toby. “It sure is.”
“Has Toby ever used a computer?”
“Yes, sir, I believe he has.”
“Has Toby ever written a computer program?”
“Yes, at least he says he has. I don’t know because I really don’t know what he does most of the time.”
“Has Toby ever been on the school’s computer network?” Lieutenant Malhomme picks up the pace of the questioning. The gambit is that once someone says yes repeatedly, they will tend to blurt out that they ‘did it’ and confess.
“Yes, he has.”
“Was Toby on the network last Friday night?”
“Not sure,” I answer. I consider sharing that I work Friday nights and about my swimming. Perhaps I should also relate the events I swim and times; perhaps volunteering lots of information will make me appear very cooperative. But before I start, they jump in, “Did Toby attack the school’s network server with a hostile computer program and wantonly encrypt the school’s permanent records?”
“Wow,” here is the big one, and I answer rhetorically, “How can a computer program be hostile?”
“Don’t play word games with me. Did Toby deliberately encrypt the school’s records so that they would become inaccessible?” Lieutenant Malhomme presses what he believes is his advantage.
Since I didn’t know if Toby had deliberately converted the files or just accidentally slipped, I respond, “I don’t know if it was deliberate.”
“We can get a court order to force you to testify under oath,” Lieutenant Malhomme says in a very authoritarian voice. “A very serious crime has occurred, and you could, if you don’t cooperate, be indicted as a co-conspirator. This will lead to fines and perhaps imprisonment for obstructing justice.”
‘Quite a mouthful,’ I think, though I must say, delivered well.
“Hold on,” Lieutenant Goodman interjects. “I’m sure he wants to help us in every way he can. I understand that he is an excellent student-athlete and realizes that no college will accept him if he can’t send his transcript. I’m sure he doesn’t want to flip burgers next year.”
Very effective switch in tactics. These guys have been around the witness interviewing circle a few times.
“Lieutenant Goodman is right,” I confess. “I’m applying now for college and need my records. Heck, even Toby needs his records.”
“Aha,” jumps in Lieutenant Malhomme. “Then you admit that Toby did it.”
“I’m not sure, sir, that I said that. But, in any case, why don’t you just ask Toby? He’ll tell you.”
“Hmmm. What do you think, Lieutenant Malhomme? Asking the suspect first isn’t standard procedure. Usually, we need someone’s testimony before confronting the prime suspect. But it might be worth a try. Principal Phluster, would you bring in Toby?”
See, that’s what I’m talking about – backwards. If they want to know if Toby did something, just ask him. Instead, they confuse everybody else before speaking with the kid who knows. I expected Lieutenant Malhomme to warn me not to leave the country, but instead, Lieutenant Goodman said, “Thanks for coming in. You’ve been very helpful.”
They ask Toby, who says that he was testing an encryption program on the server but made a mistake, converting all the files on the school’s computer instead of just a test file. He tells Lieutenants Malhomme and Goodman that he can decrypt the files if they give him access to the server for fifteen minutes.
“I’m afraid, young man, you’ve done enough damage. We’ll handle things from here.”
Decrypted
The school suspends Toby until further notice, which is too bad as he would have enjoyed watching the confusion over the next several days.
Lieutenants Goodman and Malhomme hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon and announce, “After analyzing the evidence, we have uncovered the perpetrator of the crime.”
“What exactly was the crime?” asks the same reporter.
“The perpetrator is being charged with breaking and entering,” responds Lieutenant Goodman.
“And what exactly was broken?” asks the reporter.
“Actually, we are focusing more on the entering,” counters Lieutenant Malhomme.
The reporter is about to ask, ‘What was entered?’ but Phluster interrupts and expresses his appreciation for the fine job the police have done to solve the crime and determine the perpetrator.
The reporter then asks Phluster, “When will the school be able to recover the permanent files?”
“We have the FBI’s best computer agent, Agent Surcoat, arriving tomorrow. He can decrypt, giving us full access to these files.”
On Wednesday morning, I park my Toyota in the senior parking lot and walk up to the school entrance. A black car pulls up beside me, and a bipolar mix of geek and cop steps out. I think his gun is jammed into his pocket protector.
He carefully looks in all directions and follows me up the front steps.
At the top step, I turn around and ask, “Are you Agent Surcoat, the FBI computer crime specialist?”
He panics, and his hand makes the slightest move towards his pocket protector. He puts his head down without answering and hurries into the administration building.
That afternoon, I went to see how Toby is doing. Despite all that has happened over the past year, Toby’s mom hasn’t changed since our first baseball days – days that seem a lifetime ago.
I enter Toby’s room and ask him if he wants me to turn on a light. Toby is lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling.
“Hi, Toby.”
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Great. Getting an F in every class every day I’m suspended. My chances of getting into a good school have moved from slim to none. How’s that for fair? I get As at a hard school and Fs at an easy one.”
“Your math boards will get you in somewhere.”
“Yeah? And who is going to write me a reference letter after this? I also encrypted the teachers’ files. I could fix the whole thing in a matter of minutes, but they won’t let me get on the network. Their response is ‘Thank you very much, but we think you’ve done enough already.’ Typical. They’re more worried about finding blame than fixing the problem.”
“Toby, you should see this new guy they’ve brought in from the FBI. He has done stuff for the CIA and has cracked all kinds of codes.”
“Well, I think they’ll have problems with mine. It is based on a system that’s completely different from anything that has yet been published,” Toby mutters.
“The PTA meeting,” I recount to Toby, “was unbelievable today. The parents are outraged and demanding that Phluster fix the records so that transcripts can be sent to colleges. One mother stands up and demands an answer. This ‘problem’ now threatens her darling’s chances of getting into her top choice. Well, with this pressure, Phluster’s head bobs like an exotic bird doing a mating dance.”
Agent Surcoat closes access to the computer network and spends all day in the computer lab. It is said that he is overwhelmed by the complexity of the task.
At assembly that Friday, Phluster stands up, bobs twice, and reports, “FBI Agent Surcoat has admitted that the form of encryption used was of a type that the US government has not seen before. They are still working on finding the decryption methodology and we still can’t produce any of your records. Please be patient for another couple of days.”
With that, tremendous applause breaks out, and the student body chants, “Toby….Toby….Toby.”
Toby is now our cult hero, and Phluster’s head goes into bob overdrive.
“Please be quiet. This unfortunate incident provides no reason to celebrate.”
I know it is hard on Phluster and that Toby screwed up. Still, there is a wonderful humor in this scene, and the chanting is infectious. How strange at that moment to juxtapose this scene – the loud chanting, Phluster’s bobs, and his requests for quiet with Toby lying in the dark at home, looking at the ceiling and getting Fs.
The state swimming championships are the following Saturday, and Dad and Mom come to watch. Since swimming is not Dad’s thing, he has no advice to give me before the start. I swim my best time and break the state high school record for the 1500. After the race, my dad gives me a big and meaningful hug.
Several college coaches are also in attendance, and two approach me after the race. One, the coach from Notre Dame, describes the school and their swimming program.
After he leaves, my coach comes over and congratulates me on my race and record. He mentions that he also spoke with the Notre Dame coach.
“He asked me how committed you are to swimming and how hard you work out. I told them the only thing I can: You’re a swimming maniac, and my biggest problem is getting you to stop. If I didn’t, you could conceivably swim forever.”
“Yeah,” I reply, “sounds like they have a great program, and I suppose they want me to apply. But I can’t get in, and even if I could, there is no way my folks can afford to pay for it.”
The coach stares at me. “This is the final proof that all those hours have besoaked your brain. This guy wants you to accept.”
“Apply,” I correct.
“Forget applying. I mean, you must apply, but you’re as much as accepted at Notre Dame, one of the best schools in the country. You just have to say ‘yes,’ sponge brain.”
“You mean, I don’t have to worry about my finals and next month’s boards?”
“Not really, unless you do something stupid.”
I stumble and sit down. I feel as if twelve years of schooling, parental pressure, and judgment has just been lifted from my shoulders. The realization that something I love to do could also be what I do best hits me straight in the gut. How is this? Deep down, I understand that, of course, the two must be the same.
On Sunday I drop by Toby’s. I’m nervous that my good news will upset Toby’s current state, but I also know that I will tell him even if it does. Toby will sense it and ask.
As I enter, however, I witness quite a surprising scene. Toby has music turned up to a thunderous level, and Toby’s mom is wearing earplugs. Pages of printouts are strewn all over the living room floor.
“Hey, there,” he yells with a ‘back to normal’ energy level. “How are things? Most of us crawled out of the water three hundred million years ago.”
“Actually,” I yell, “things are good.”
“Yeah? What’s happening?” He turns down the volume.
“Looks like Notre Dame will accept me on a swimming scholarship.”
“Great job,” he responds with a high-five. Toby is amazing. A year ago, I pictured it would be Toby telling me he was heading off to an elite college in the Fall while I was waiting for an admission to State. Only Toby could treat these two impostors just the same.
“Phluster came by this morning to talk to Mom and me,” Toby shares.
“Ut-Oh. What trouble are you in now?”
“Nope. Phluster said that the FBI computer crime group couldn’t figure out how I encrypted the files. It is based on something the FBI has never seen before. They sent samples of the files to the top security companies, and everyone is wondering how I did it. Agent Surcoat has thrown in the towel and told Phluster to get me back to fix the files. He will monitor everything I do so that I don’t make things worse, but they can’t figure my system out.”
“Phluster says that if I cooperate and fix the files, he will let me back into school on Monday. I’ll have to have a hearing before a federal judge, but the school will request leniency if I restore everything.”
“Hey,” Toby concludes, “it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but because it did, I now know that the FBI and top encryption experts can’t break it. I logged in to some of the blogs yesterday, and everyone is discussing the dangers of this encryption and what could happen if it gets loose. They are calling it the ‘Toby virus.’ How’s that for fame and notoriety?”
“A lot of kids,” I point out, “will be sadly disappointed if you fix the files. You’ve become a cult hero to those with bad grades.”
I stay at Toby’s house until Agent Surcoat comes by to escort Toby to the lab. By Monday, the government cars have left, and I decide to drop by the administration office to ask for my transcript. They print out the document, and there is a collective sigh of relief that it works. I check my grades and they appear correct, though I am disappointed that Toby didn’t change several of my ‘B+s’ to ‘As’. Nevertheless, he has worked his magic.
I catch up with Toby after physics, and we walk down to the gym together. Everyone we pass nods their appreciation or complains, “Hey, Toby. Why’d you fix it?” or “My man, I thought you had finally done what no one else could – wipe my record clean.”
I join Toby and Toby’s mom at the courthouse for the hearing on Criminal Case #3239, otherwise known as the ‘Toby Case.’ The judge is elderly and may have never touched a computer. He is helplessly lost in the testimony. The computer experts discuss how Toby had hacked the X-drive, broken the network PGP code, and so on. The language and vocabulary clash within this centuries-old forum as if someone is sending Morse code in an e-mail.
Toby testifies that he had not meant to do it. He was working on an encryption routine because he thought the feds were wiretapping everyone’s email. He admits that he accidentally typed an asterisk, which caused his encryption software to apply to all files rather than just his test file. He tried to reconvert but lost his network connection and couldn’t reconnect until he returned to school on Monday. By then, the school had locked everyone out of the network.
For all the parental and community abuse that Toby had caused Phluster, he is very kind and gracious. With his head on minimum bob, he asks the court to show Toby great leniency.
The judge barely endures the case, but when Agent Surcoat and a local professor describe various encryption techniques, he becomes desperate and does everything he can to get the case off his docket. The judge hurries the proceedings, interrupts the testimony, and then summarily announces that, after lengthy consideration, he has decided that Toby must perform one hundred hours of community service, slams his gavel down with particular urgency.
Afterwards, the court asks Toby how he would like to perform this service. Toby says that he will teach computer classes at the Y.
During the next several weeks, I see little of Toby as he is anxious to work off the 100 hours before the end of the school year.
A week later, a letter comes in the mail offering me a position in the incoming freshman class at Notre Dame. An additional form offers a scholarship based on financial need.
Days later, with our senior year winding down towards its conclusion, I again hear Toby’s name all over school.
“Have you heard about Toby?” A friend asks.
“Oh no,” I worry, “not again.”
I need to go to the source, because rumor and reality are too often confused in high school hallways.
“Hey Toby, what’s going on?” I ask when I finally catch up with him. “Is what I’m hearing true?”
“Sure is. Alabama is giving me a baseball scholarship. I’m going to be a Division I catcher.”
“I haven’t heard that one,” I reply. “How about the one that you’ve cut a business deal?”
“More truth to that one,” he admits. “A major security and encryption company called me and is offering $250,000 for my program and a job for one year helping them integrate it into some of their security products. I’ll live at home next year, save up money, and help Mom with some of her expenses. I’ll then have enough to pay for college.”
“You’re unbelievable!”
“Well,” he replies, “maybe we both are.”
The student council elects the graduation speaker for our commencement ceremonies, and the vote is unanimous for Toby. Since I am a class officer and a friend, they ask me to introduce him on the graduation podium.
On that bright June day, my folks and I drive to school and park in Academy’s parking lot. As we walk up to the entrance, the sun breaks through the morning fog, and the view from Academy High emerges. The view is stunning, and this is one of the few days the school was designed for. I pause on the steps to absorb the moment.
My folks and Toby’s mom have reserved seats in the front, and we converse for a few minutes before joining the procession to take our seats on the dais.
After his preliminary remarks, Principal Phluster introduces me. As I approach the podium, Toby holds out his hand, and we low-five as I walk by. That moment, that contact with Toby releases within me an overwhelming surge of emotion that has been building up for years. With my eyes welling with tears, I swallow hard to control my voice and emotions.
Struggling, I speak into the microphone: “I’d like to introduce my classmate and friend, Toby. Toby has had a remarkable year, which ranged from a close encounter with Club Fed to becoming our first corporate tycoon. He’s become a legend at this school in his own short time. He is my friend, our friend, please welcome, Toby.”
The class starts to chant, Toby, Toby, Toby!”
Toby waddles to the podium. He has a broad grin and an irrepressible look of amusement in his eyes. He adjusts the microphone and stands before us for what seems like an eternity, as the crowd awaits and worries that Toby’s thoughts may also be encrypted.
He looks over the class, parents, and teachers as if each of us is a piece of a puzzle that, of course, must fit in somewhere and for which there is no instruction manual.
“I can’t believe you’ve asked me to speak,” he finally starts. “I’m sure the only reason you have is that I don’t have very much to say.”
“The past couple of years have been a very strange and, at times, painful trip. Although what I’ve been through is different from what you’ve been through, our journeys have been more similar than not. Two years ago, I went away to the school my father went to as a kid. He always considered himself a Stonington graduate and felt I should follow in his footsteps. He also thought of himself as a vice president of a bank. When he lost his job early last summer, he also lost himself.”
“He always thought of himself as part of something else and never just as himself. When he lost his job, he began to drink, and one night last fall, while driving, he hit a retaining wall and died. The insurance company claims he killed himself in that accident. I don’t know whether he did or not, but I do know that in some ways, he had killed himself years ago by believing that another’s goals and aspirations could substitute for his own. He was so caught up in striving for others that he never found the time to look deeply inside and discover those things that he, himself, wanted to do.”
“In thinking about these last couple of years, I remember a story that I must’ve asked my mom to read me a hundred times. The story is about Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet when they are lost in the woods.”
“‘The fact is,’ said Rabbit, ‘we’ve missed our way somehow.’ They are resting in a small sand pit on the top of the Forest. Pooh is getting rather tired of that sand pit, and suspects it of following them about, because whichever direction they start in, they always ended up at it, and each time, as it came through the mist at them, Rabbit says triumphantly, ‘Now I know where we are!’ and Pooh says sadly, ‘So do I,’ and Piglet says nothing. He has tried to think of something to say, but the only thing he can think of is, ‘Help, help!’ and it seems silly to say that, when he has Pooh and Rabbit with him.”
“‘Well,’ says Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanks him for the nice walk they are having, ‘we’d better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?’”
“‘How would it be,’ says Pooh slowly, ‘if, as soon as we’re out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?’”
“‘What’s the good of that?’” asks Rabbit.
“‘Well,’ says Pooh, ‘we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we look for this Pit, we’d be sure not to find it which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we aren’t looking for, which might be just what we are looking for, really.’”
“On our trip, we can’t listen to Piglet and just think ‘help’ because there really isn’t anyone who can help. We also can’t listen to teachers, relatives, and others who are like Rabbit and think they can get us home when actually all they will do is send us in circles. No, we all have to be like Pooh and try to find ourselves again, as we were when we were kids, by exploring various directions and trying many different things. Sometimes we will feel like we’ve missed our way, but other times we will feel deep within that, we have found something special – something that we not only like to do but also are good at doing.”
“But it’s even more. What we will find is part of ourselves, which is and must be a good thing. When this occurs, and it will for all of us, we must keep going in that direction and discover all that we can.”
“I mean, look at what happened to me: Even though it looked like I had missed my way after I encrypted everyone’s permanent file, it now turns out to be the right way and got the attention of the company that is going to pay me a lot of money to work for them – this is definitely a good thing. What I have found out, and as we all must find out, is that each of us, ourselves, is an encrypted, difficult riddle.”
At this, some kids begin to chant, “Toby, Toby, Toby!”
Toby waits. He has the same look as when he received his baseball MVP award. “My mom used to say something, and I don’t think I truly understood what it meant until this year. In fact, I think is the answer to each of our riddles after all. So, I’d like to close by saying to everyone: The way to do, is to be.”
With this, Toby looks directly at his mom, nods slightly, and returns to his chair. We remain on the dais as the seniors file by to receive their handshakes and diplomas from Phluster.
While walking off, I comment, “You know, Toby, for someone who has said no more than a couple of words at a time over many years, that was quite a remarkable speech.”
He turns around but just looks at me with half a smile and those cavernous dimples.
I add, “Somehow your speech says exactly how I feel about my last several years, but there is no way I could’ve ever found the words.”
“I gave the speech for both of us,” he replies.
Toby turns to look over the crowd of parents, teachers, and students. He looks at the sky and then back at me. The look on his face is the only face I’ve ever seen it on, and maybe the only one that it could be on. It is the ‘Toby look’ and an expression that speaks to all that we’ve been through and, I suspect, all that is to come.