The Art of Being a Gentleman

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DAVID AND MACK BECAME best friends in the second grade at recess.

              Having already discovered that baseball was his niche, David liked to organize games with the other kids from his grade. However, since most children at that age didn't have the coordination to actually play the game as well as David had seen played on TV... he was easily frustrated with their attempts to throw and catch and hit. He already knew that he was going to play professionally when he was older, and he wanted to get in as much practice as he could but man, these rookies were seriously slowing him down.

              Mack, the new kid that year, was the only second grader that could hit the ball further than second base, and so David had deemed him worthy of being on his team. A coveted position amongst elementary students everywhere.

              The first recess that Mack had shown up to play, David had walked up to him while he was practicing his swings—making sure that his Red Sox cap was on full display so the new kid could see that he was the real deal—and ended up losing his front teeth to Mack's backswing.

              One had been loose already, but the other had been a "combo deal" as eight-year-old Mack had told him while they sat in the nurse's office, David holding a tissue to his bloody mouth, tears running down his cheeks.

              "It's really a good thing," Mack had promised. "Now the tooth fairy owes you more money. You're going to be rich!"

              Even at that age Mack had known exactly what to say to make David feel better... and how to get himself out of trouble.

              From that point on, they were best friends. They went to each others birthday parties and rode bikes together after school. By junior high they were plotting which girls they were going to ask to school dances, cutting class together, and consequently going to detention together.

              They were each other's greatest allies; figuring out parents, homework, and girls, talking about life, sports, movies, or sometimes nothing at all. They knew each other better than anyone else.

              David and Mack had spent so much time together over the past decade, that both parents had basically adopted another child. David even had a drawer of pajama's a spare clothes, even a toothbrush, that he kept at Mack's house in case of a last minute sleepover, or if he just forgot his own.

              All of this to say, that David had always felt completely at home at the Mackey residence. It truly had been his place of escape and comfort many times.

              And now Ricky 'The Ragin Asian' was ruining it.

              "The moulding around the windows is really something," he rambled as the group of friends walked up the driveway towards Mack's house. "It really gives it a classy look, don't you think Rach?" Would you want something like that on our house?"

              "Maybe," she peered at it carefully. "It's really pretty."

              "It is! And a style that you don't see on most houses nowadays. Did you know that the architect Mies Van der Rohe actually came up with the—"

              "And that's enough to kill my party buzz," David groaned, pushing the front door open and stepping through. He had actually been looking forward to tonight until Ricky had to talk the whole car ride over there and be his typical Ricky, know-it-all, self.

              "David, the polite thing would be to wait for the owner of the house to let you in."

              "Yeah, well if you want to wait two hours for Mack's dad to get home then suit yourself."