During those two weird years where my parents sought new
life partners, there was a lot of crap to deal with. Living with mom, who lived
with a roommate, who also had a daughter, was weird. Then, I had the extra
pressure of dealing with Paul and his kids, twice or three times a week. None
of this was bad, per se. Paul and Mom were quick to include us in at least one
evening’s worth of activities, even if it was a trip to Dairy Queen to eat
burgers and play Galaga and Pac Man. Our roommate’s kid was a fellow only
child, and very girly, so we stayed out of each other’s way. It was hard on
someone who was an only child for ten years.
Mom got that, I think, and made sure I had space to retreat
to when the kids were all over. I grew up in my mother’s day care center,
eventually becoming one of the “older kids” who helped wrangle the younger
kids. On days when I knew that was expected of me, I was pretty good with them.
At home, or during the school year, I liked being alone with my thoughts and my
toys.
My father’s house wasn’t much better. He started dating as
soon as my mother did, if not sooner. I only saw him every other weekend, and
that in and of itself was pretty hard on us. Dad went from being not around so
much to being someone who suddenly gave a shit what I was doing. Interesting.
And dad’s new girlfriend, Jo Anne, was nice enough, as well. They went out and
did things on the weekends, and so that left me and Jo Ann’s son, Joel, with a
baby sitter.
I knew Joel in passing. He and I went to the same school. We
were in different classes, but we were still together. And just for the record,
ten year old boys have no idea how to navigate those kinds of situations where
parents are suddenly dating and you’re suddenly expected to get along.
It was difficult, initially. Joel’s father was nowhere to be
found. If they ever got together, I don’t remember it. I remember Joel being
upset about it at the time. I got the impression from listening to the
grown-ups talk that he was always promising to visit, but never quite made it
over.
So, here we were; two morose kids, sitting in Joel’s room,
trying to figure out what to talk about. Being ten is one of those ages where
you’re too old to really “play” but you’re too young to do much else. We had,
on the surface, very little in common. At the time, Joel was really interested
in World War II. I used to watch old John Wayne movies with my grandfather, but
that was it. Joel knew the difference between a Tiger tank and a Panzer. That
kind of “into,” the way boys will memorize baseball stats and other trivia. The
way I was “into” comic books, if I’m being fair.
We were floundering. The only comics he had were Sgt. Rock
comics. I’m not complaining, but I was an Enemy Ace man, myself. At the bottom
of his small stack of comics was Star
Wars #6, one of the issues I didn’t have. “Oh, cool,” I said. “I’ve never
seen this.”
“I didn’t like it,” Joel said.
“Why not?”
“There was a bunch of stuff in there that wasn’t in the
movie. I wanted the movie.”
I disagreed with him, but it made sense. We started talking
about Biggs, the 1977 Elephant in the Room, and his appearance on gum cards and
in comics and even the novelization, but not in the movie itself. We both
agreed it would have been better if he was.
“What else you got?” I asked.
Joel walked over to his toy chest and opened it, and pulled
out Slave 1. Boba Fett’s personal
space ship. It was just large enough to be impressive, but small enough to fly
with one hand. And his Boba Fett action figure was right there in the cockpit,
visible through the smoky plastic canopy. I was blown away. Why the hell
wouldn’t you lead with that? “Hi, I’m Joel, I’ve got Slave 1.” Dammit, man!
See, my parents gave me the playsets, but not so much the
vehicles. Joel had star ships, but not as many of the playsets.
We agreed to pool our resources, and the next time I came
over, it was with my Star Wars figures in hand (well, in vinyl carrying case). Joel let me take Slave 1 around the room for a test flight. It was glorious. After
the Millennium Falcon, and the
snowspeeders, my favorite space ship in the entire Star Wars fleet is Slave 1.
Mind you, we didn’t become best friends overnight. It was rocky.
But we had found a common language, one that eventually led to other
activities, like watching terrible Sci-Fi offerings on HBO, and playing Dungeons and Dragons together, and
swapping fantasy books we’d read. We became good friends, and eventually step-brothers.
And the Star Wars universe was a
constant topic of conversation until I moved to Waco several years later.
