Scott Became Great, the Great Scott

During the summer of my twelfth year I saw my parents divorce officially and my mother achieve new lows in parental ineptitude. This is the summer we had lived with Lou the Weaver. Some of you may remember the story about the Weaver from a previous column.

Anyway, that summer portended nice weather and painful mishaps with my diminishing list of friends. I didn’t really know how to relate with people very well at that time. My mother’s obsessive tendencies were not an example of how to make friends. Her “mentoring” was quite possible why I was frequently inappropriate when trying to meet new people. I blame this tendency toward inappropriateness on an overactive and underused brain in an extremely addictive environment.

I was a very intelligent only child. I knew how messed up my life was but I had no recourse to change the situation. I thought that if only I could go live with my father life would improve. The only problem with this pipe dream was that my father didn’t really want me to live with him. He and his wife were swingers, and as far as I understand, they never once went to court to say, “hey, this kid might do better if he lived with us. His mom is a drunk, can’t really hold a job that pays the bills and is a mess.” I guess the prospect of a fat, smart, creative but destructive asthmatic just didn’t appeal to my father.

But this column isn’t really about all that. It’s about my friends and what happened with one of them. The friend I refer to is Scott. I wish I could tell you his last name but libel prevents me from doing such. Scott is a pretty great person. Sometimes now I even think of calling him out of the blue and thanking him for being my friend once upon a time. I’ll explain all this in a moment. Scott showed the kind of insight and heart you rarely find in a male 12 year old. His bushy red hair and smoking habit belied his true sensitivity.

All the kids I grew up with smoked by the way. Even I did. We all lived in the worst part of a stupid little upper class town. In my part of town, when the fire marshal showed up to ask someone if he had a permit to burn his leaves he would escort the fire marshal off his property at gun point. Shortly thereafter the police would escort said leaf burner to jail. This happened more than once. My friends and I smoked because that’s what all the adults did. We might have had sex with each other if any girls were around. Instead we were testosterone machines cruising around bumming smokes off each other. We lived without roll models and did the best we could.

Here’s why Scott was special. One time Scott had spent the night over at my house. He had done this many times before, but this time my mom drove him home drunk. I didn’t even notice because by this time she always smelled like alcohol. She was also pretty good at holding it together in my presence so as not to set me off. But Scott’s mom noticed, and she stopped letting him come over to spend the night. His mom was understandably appalled my mom would drive kids around loaded.

I had no idea of these things of course, so I dutifully called Scott every week to see if he wanted to come over and hang out and spend the night. For a couple of months he said no he couldn’t. He gave me great reasons why and I believed them. I didn’t really have any other friends so I just hung out alone in my bedroom. My bedroom at the Weaver’s house was walled with that great paneling in mobile homes from the 70s. It was dark and depressing.

Finally one Friday I called Scott and asked him to come over and spend the night. I heard a discussion in the background and Scott said he would call me back. Ten minutes later he did and said that he would come over that night and would stay most of the next day. He rode his bike. We only lived about 3 miles away and the ride was pretty safe. We spent the night watching movies and shooting the breeze. We just had a good time hanging out.

That next day we were outside, sitting in the sun and swapping fart stories when he said he had to tell me something. He told me the reason he didn’t come over the last few months wasn’t because he was busy. His mom wouldn’t let him. He said the reason why he made up all the excuses was because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. He also told me the reason why his mom wouldn’t let him come over was my mom’s drunkenness when she dropped him off, her smelly breath and slurred speech. The only reason he even got to come over this time was because he begged his mom. Apparently he knew how much I needed a friend and told his mom so. His mom finally gave in and decided to trust his judgment.

A tear comes to my eye as I write this. I can’t believe the heart that boy showed simply by choosing to be my friend. Eventually we grew apart. My mom separated us by moving to new locations and eventually entered into alcohol therapy. I am not sure if his mom stopped letting him come over. But as things normally go we just drifted apart. I was always happy to see him. Scott was a quiet and shy person. He was short and had fair skin but he meant a lot to me.

Scott was one of those special persons in life. He believed in me as a person when there wasn’t a whole lot to believe in. He did things to help build my confidence. We talked about our dreams and did his best not to let me grow up in a vacuum of confusion and self-doubt. Life is hard enough.

Thanks for reading to the end.