Let's Not Meet: A Collection

prettier

When I was in third grade, I made a friend named Nicholas. Nicky, for short. We were both on the quieter side compared to our classmates, and we both shared a love for pudding cups. One day at school, Nicky forgot his lunch at home, so I told him he could have my pudding cup. That's how we became friends. From that moment on, we shared my pudding cups everyday. The other kids in our class used to tease us, accusing us of having crushes on each other and chant that horrible (horrible to an eight-year-old, at least) K-I-S-S-I-N-G song all the time.

It had become customary for Nicky and I to separate ourselves from the other kids at recess and at lunch. We had a big tree we would always meet under, in the morning, at recess and for a few minutes after school before our parents came to pick us up. Nicky himself lived with his older sister and single mother. He tried explaining the concept of "divorce" to me once, but in my eight-year-old mind it didn't make sense that his parents weren't together, happily married. As you can imagine, my parents were married, and my home life was the epitome of adoring, nuclear family. Imagine Full House, except with a mother who hadn't passed away, and a couple of cousins instead of Uncles. I can't recall a single moment in my childhood where I left unloved or uncared for in any way. I soon realized that was a rarity.

During one of mine and Nicky's morning visits to "the tree" as we had cleverly nicknamed it, he invited me to his birthday party. He excitedly unzipped his backpack and withdrew an invitation card made of blue construction paper. There was a hand drawn tree on the front, two little kids of approximately mine and Nicky's size and colouring, and a home address scribbled inside. To this day I still have it. When the bell rang, he and I ran inside with the rest of the kids and I waited all day for him to give out the rest of his birthday invitations, but he never did. I was the only one he had invited. Because the other kids teased us so much, my eight-year-old mind had chalked it up to the conclusion that he didn't want any bullies there and had therefore invited his only friend. Me. Suffice to say I was flattered and happy.

I gave the card to my mother later on in the evening. She smiled and said, "How cute!" and very quickly gave me permission to go. It was my first non-family birthday party. The next day I went to the store with my mother and older brother and we picked out a birthday present for Nicky. He and I were heavily into Transformers, so we got him a tiny Transformer (after getting permission from his mother) and I wrapped it up in blue wrapping paper all by myself.

His birthday was on the following Saturday.

My mother dropped me off at Nicky's house, briefly speaking with his mother in the kitchen (discussing pick-up times and 'how fast they're growing') before kissing me on the forehead goodbye. Because Nicky, his sister, and I were the only ones there, we decided to play a couple of board games and then tag when it wasn't raining anymore. We were in the backyard. It got to be a little sunny after, and Nicky and I fell deep into our dramatic re-enactment of the latest and most exciting Power Rangers episode to-date. That we had seen, at least. His sister - a pre-teen at the time - went inside for a minute to 'check something' which Nicky later revealed to me, was a code phrase she used when she wanted to talk to the cute neighbour boy on the phone. Inside the kitchen, his mother was cooking and keeping an eye on us through the window.

It was only as we went inside to eat, that I realized there were no decorations. In fact there wasn't anything to signify that it was Nicky's birthday at all, except for the homemade chocolate cake. I had loosely gathered that Nicky's family didn't have a lot of money, and that maybe that was the reason he went to school without lunch so often, but I never really asked and Nicky never really said anything. Not that an eight-year-old would do either of those things.

We went down to the basement after we cute the cake and took a couple photos, where there was a tiny TV and an SNES. We played video games for roughly ten minutes before there was a loud knock on the door. Nicky stopped the game (Yoshi's Island) and jogged up the basement stairs to answer the door, eventually screaming, "Dad! I thought you said you couldn't come!"