The Great Bypass - 1990

It feels odd, turning thirteen. I'm still real little, physically, and I don't feel any of the rebellion towards authority that teenagers are supposed to be famous for.  Maybe one day I'll think my teachers and parents are super oppressive, but--right now, at least--I think it's all just overblown.

Not that there aren't changes afoot. Junior High starts in two weeks. I'm pretty nervous about it. Luckily, I don't have to change schools--Central High School is a huge, three-story monolith on the corner of 6th and 7th that houses grades 5-8 in Sheldon, and it's only a block from my house on 6th and 6th. Still, Junior High is a whole new ballgame. Instead of two teachers, I'll have at least six, and I don't know anything about any of them. I'm also pretty scared of the eighth graders--there are some big and mean guys in that class. Plus, of course, the G word--girls. I've had exactly one girlfriend so far. We were a couple for 4 months, during which our communication consisted of two notes from her, one asking me to be her boyfriend and another one telling me it was over. As far as I can tell, nothing else is on the horizon, either--it's hard for me to imagine many girls going for a short, skinny, freckled kid with glasses.

But I'm putting that all out of my mind, at least for tonight. Me and two friends, John Reilly and Bradley Chalkers, are heading out to Putt-a-Round as a way of celebrating my birthday. I know it's not much, but also know my parents both work, and money's usually pretty tight in a family of six. Plus, I'm happy that both John and Bradley are going; they're my two best friends, but they're also sort of enemies; they've agreed to a truce for my birthday outing.

*********

It's a classic Putt-a-Round night. Mom dropped us off around 7:00 and gave me a twenty. "So you can play two rounds," she said. Putt-a-Round is busy but not overly so; Bradley, John and I play 36 rounds of mini-golf, making jokes and gossiping about the 7th and 8th grade females coming our way.

"What's it like kissing a girl?" Bradley and I ask John, the only one of us who has.

"It's awesome, man," he answers.

After we finish, we pool our money and buy a bunch of junk food and continue talking in the parking lot while we wait for my mom. Bradley and John have discovered that they're both Mets fans, and proceed to razz me mercilessly about the fate of the hapless Cubs just one year after they won the NL East. I counter with the cocaine habits of Daryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden. The lights pop on above us.

Not too much later Mom pulls in in our old green Plymouth station wagon. We pile in, cradling our junk food, and continue the baseball debate.

At a lull in the conversation, Mom turns around and asks us, "Did you guys have fun?"

"Yeah," we all say. "Thank you so much, Connie," Bradley and John say. I turn around in the seat and look at the lights of Putt-a-Round, fading in the distance as we drive into Sheldon proper.

"Yeah," I say to myself. "Thank you so much."