As Told By Tuck & Axel

The Prompt

The Prompt--Tucker

I'm going to make one thing clear: writing this book is the last thing I want to spend my increasingly limited time on Earth doing. Ax thinks our lives are interesting. They are not. He thinks I could be an amazing author if I tried it. I do not agree. But then he promised me he would do laundry for a week if I wrote it with him, and I'm a simple guy; I enjoy beer, steak, tits, and not having to do laundry. So, here I am.

Axel gave me a prompt for my first chapter. I use the term prompt here very loosely. When I say prompt I mean a hardly intelligible, bleeding ink-memo on an old Chili's napkin he had in his glove compartment. Yeah. I know.

Write your 1st chapter on how you met your handsome best friend. The rest is up to you boo

And yes, that is word-for-word. The napkin is still lying on the mahogany desk next to me as I type, a desk that was meant to be used for legal work and other important defense attorney matters. However, when you're straight out of law school and can barely afford splitting the rent in a two-bedroom apartment in DC, you can't really complain.

I mean, I am doing real legal work, just not the stuff I want to be doing. I have a 9-5 job that barely pays the bills, so when Ax approached me about a book that may or may not be published and may or may not waste my precious time, you could see why I was-and still am-a bit hesitant in writing it, and frankly, a lot annoyed.

So I guess I'll just get it over with.

Ax moved to my school our senior year. He was a transfer student from some average public school in his district. He grew up in Pullach (that's in Germany for all you uneducated swine. Actually, never mind. No one is reading this but YOU, AXEL. AFTER I COMPLETE ALL YOUR FUCKING CHAPTERS!)

I was stuck sitting in front of Ax for four out of my five academic classes that year. Our last names conveniently began with the same letter, (I was Oaks and he was Otto) meaning we were basically inseparable by the second week of school. I actually remember introducing him to my friends at lunch on the first day of school. It went a little something like this:

Me: "Gang, we have a newbie!"

Here's where you channel every American high school male athlete stereotype you can think of. Grab a hold of that image. Times it by 5. Name the resulting prototypes Max, Matt, Colin, AJ, and James. You now have "the gang."

Matt: "Newwwwbie! Welcome to the crew! I'm Matt," he pauses to give Ax a fist pump. Ax responds well. I am starting to think he is not a foreign specimen that you observe on display, but rather, just a boy with a virtually indecipherable accent and a head of short golden blonde hair that rivaled my retriever's.

Colin, AJ, James, and Max give similar greetings. They nod. They grunt. They are primitive.

Me: "Newbie has a name. It's Otto Von Bismarck."

Judging by the confused, open-mouthed stare the other five primates give me, they do not know who Otto Von Bismarck was. Judging by Axel's snorts beside me, he is well educated enough to know of the famous Prussian statesmen. This makes me happy.

Axel: "Just Otto is fine."

The guys all resume their smiles and nods again. Otto is comprehendible. Otto von Bismarck is not. I now understand that the group of five boys who I have associated with since freshman year are nowhere near my level of intellect. (Don't get me wrong here. I loved those guys with all my heart, still do. They just lacked a little bit in the brain capacity department, but with all those balls to the head who could blame them?)

Axel and I sit down across from each other and begin engaging in the daily trivial conversation about which girls suddenly got hot and which ones spiraled out of control over the summer. Axel has this huge smile on his face as we talk about the hot girls we hang out with. I smile back at him, just because it seems contagious. I am excited to go out on Friday night with him.

Five minutes later we discover Axel plays soccer. The primates had a hard time understanding why he called soccer football. They think it's his accent that's making him switch up the names. This logic does not make sense in the slightest. Axel and I exchange glances. I'm starting to like the kid.

Like all teenage boys do, we bond over our sport. We start hanging out after school practicing. He is a goalie, I play defense. He makes me shoot on him. I don't score once, which isn't that surprising, considering I spend my time protecting the goal instead of shooting at it.

But then tryouts start. Our starting goalie, Max, whom you met earlier, assumes his position in the net. One of our star forwards, Evan, leads a shooting drill. I learn that Axel can not only goal tend, but he can shoot too. All three of his shots make it in. I congratulate him on this, then suggest he gets in goal. I wave our coach over and insist my new German friend gets in the net. He happily obliges. He hears there are good "fútbolistas" in Germany. Yes. He did say fútbolistas. And no, they don't speak Español in Germany.

Ax is thrown in the net without enough time to get his gloves on. This does not faze him. Every boy on our team takes a round of shots against him. He saves every one of them. This is amazing. The boys are going crazy. We may be good this year.

We all take another round of shots on Ax. NONE of them go in. Coach is going wild. Axel is beaming. I am jumping up and down next to him the second he leaves the net. At one point I pick him up and spin him around. Coach pulls the two of us aside after practice.

"Well Oaks, I think you've finally met your match," he says to me, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Axel and I grin at each other.

I think I have found my first best friend.