@JFCC – I had a kid sit at the end of my lunch table my Junior year. We were a nerds — smart people — table though and we may have occassionally picked on him in a fairly good natured way because he was a dirtball and in a lower grade, but never really befriended him either. He ended up killing himself late that year, over the Summer or the next year. I’m not even kidding.

@Sean – no airborne dairy products. No, my torment was primarily limited to naively inviting my new-found seventh grade friends—ho were arguably not the finest examples of humanity from my class—over to my house to play videogames, then later discovering my copies of Street Fighter 2 and NBA Jam were missing.

Funny thing—in ninth grade I decided I’d test this whole theory of high school classism as outlined by John Hughes and deliberately sat at the popular kids’ lunch table. After about three days of snide remarks, they accepted my presence and eventually found me quite useful for helping them with homework or prepping for a test. Thus I became “the people’s nerd,” and was left alone (by the A-listers, at least) for the rest of my HS career.

For the record, though, not a one of those popular folks deigned to enter into actual friendship with me, despite my sitting at that table for an entire school year. Shortly thereafter I founded what I called the B-group, centered around the HS band, chorus and drama groups and weekly sessions of Magic: The Gathering at the Chez Clarke.

- That’s the beauty of this Blog and my revisionist photographic memory. Even if you were budy being tormented by the Cranberry Crew or the Bog Brigade – all you have to do is read my dispatches and catch up on this boy’s life.

Sorry!

Other than that, I have no knowledge of your high school career, as I was busy being tormented in junior high school at the time.

- It was all over an egg. A brick?!?! Wasn’t my story abundantly clear that the Albion Street Irregulars were as non ’street’ a ‘gang’ could be. (*Please note – Albion Street Irregulars is just a name I co-opted for this piece. There was no ‘gang’ – just a group of kids who liked to play G.I. Joe’s in their drive-ways. Irregulars comes from the size Tuff-Skins we wore.) Anyway – you probably thought ‘brick’ becuase that’s what Johnny B needed to tell you to get you to come along and harrass me. If it weren’t for Johnny B’s deception, our ships might never have collided and battled.
- You are correct on the Ray-Bans. So what’s that GoogleEarth is showing me on the roof. OMG It’s the skull of Spenders!!!
- Book bag thing. I compressed events for dramatic license. Stop trying to rat me out OB. This is The Ed Zone – not the NY Times. I can go all Jayson Blair on this post as much as I want.
- Locker thing. I don’t recall that at all which means it probably happened. Details got lost in my spike head back then.

Pretty much how I remember things, but not exactly. I realize you are probably taking some liberties here for the sake of levity, humor and brevity, but where to begin?

• Wasn’t the retaliation from Disco a throwing of a brick?
• We didn’t toss your Sox cap on the roof, we had you believe we tossed your RayBans on the roof, which I had, in fact, pocketed and later returned.
• The book bag in the car thing did happen at the same time though, but I believe it was during the school year and not the Summer.
• We knew you were coming to Papa and before you started I seem to remember some good natured harrassment/hazing of you at your school locker the day you were to start.

Funny how this stuff makes you reminisce and it is funny how you make and leave friends over time, at least as you are young. First I am friends with Tom, meet you, but become friends with John. Eventually John becomes friends with Nate (still is today as I saw them at B&N last year) and Kevin from hanging with me. My Senior year, I am friends and hanging with everyone, including you, Bain and Chip, plus my old crew. I go to college, drift away from them and we become BFF (with the braiding and all that). Now, my circle of friends is pretty much all your boys from UMass, plus Mook, who we meet via Papas Part Deux (talk about hazing).

Funny roads we travel, but it has been a good ride and shall we never reach those Two Roads Diverged.