A day to Remember
Friendship, when you first look at it, is such a simple phrase. But when you think about it the word contains a degree of depth that can be astonishing. It’s definition can take many forms. Some as simple as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer or as complicated as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. But explaining it, now that’s a whole different animal.
I believe there are three degrees of friendships. Childhood friendships, Adult friendships and Senior friendships or as I like to describe it, end of life relationships. These three categories can have a number of subcategories. Childhood friendships for example. Your first friends are kids from your block. Then come all the kids you meet in Grammar School junior high and High School. After you meet these kids you have friends in the neighborhood. There’s teammates on your little league baseball team and then the school band and so on and so on and so on.
Adult friends can be people you meet in college, coworkers, guys from the bowling team, girls from the hair salon and any other adult activities. Senior friends are people you meet skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving and at swingers parties (more like sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, at the counter in Denny’s eating your senior breakfast or meeting at the dog park). Just kidding but you get the idea.
Then you get into best friends, lifelong buddies, Blood Brothers this can easily get out of hand.
Let me give you an example of childhood friendships.
I was about 7 years old, that would make it about 1962, when I walked out into my front yard. Across the street Don and Willie Hooper were messing with their father’s car. Don was about 12 and Willie was about 9 but they tolerated me every now and then. Don would open the trunk and jump in. Willie would slam the trunk closed on top of him. Somehow Don would unlatch the trunk from inside and pop out. It was a cool magic trick. I was sitting cross-legged on my lawn watching when all of a sudden Don and Willie both jumped into the trunk. Then Willie’s head popped up and yelled Albert come on over join in on the trick. I was a little hesitant but wanting to be one of the guys I jumped in.
Me being a chunky little Mexican the three of us made it a tight squeeze. The trunk slammed down hard and it was Pitch Black except for a little light coming from the screws in the tail lights. We were packed in like a can of sardines with Don in the back, Willie in the middle and me in the front. And this was a problem. Don couldn’t get to the latch which was in front of the trunk. Even if he could get his hand past Willie and me, my stomach was snug up against the latch. No way Jose. After struggling for a few minutes it got really quiet. Then we realized we were sweating and it was getting hot in there. We began pounding from inside the trunk and yelling. Which started to freak me out. I started to cry. Willie, sensing my fear, tried to make a joke. “You know if we die in here our names will be in the paper tomorrow”. Don smacked him in the head the only place he could reach and we all laughed. Then it got silent. And that’s when we heard it. A whistle and then a second whistle. The Helms Bakery truck was coming up the street. And that meant Fat Fred, my next door neighbor was going to get his daily donuts
So we started yelling like a bunch of banshees. To make an already long story short Fat Fred and the driver came up to the car and realized what was happening. They went to the house and got Mrs. Hooper. She came out yelling at Don and Willie “what do you think you’re doing? Can you breathe in there? Where are the car keys”? They’re in here with us came the answer. “Oh my God your father is the only one who has another set of keys and he’s at work. I have to call him”. Fat Fred and the Helms driver suggested that she should also call the police.
Now a crowd is starting to gather. We can hear kids from the neighborhood and other grown-ups. Over at my house my mother is starting to wonder what’s going on across the street and then just like a mother she starts to think where’s Albert? Now we begin to hear sirens. Up to this point I’m not sure how long we’ve been locked in this trunk. It seems like hours but I’m sure it wasn’t any more than 20 minutes. Still we were very lucky that it was an overcast autumn day. If this had been a hot summer day we’d be in real trouble. Don and Willie started arguing about whose fault this was and how much trouble they were going to be in. And I had problems of my own. I had to pee and I had to pee bad. The police were here, soon to be accompanied by the fire department. They were arguing how to pry open the trunk. This was decades before the jaws of life so all they had was a crowbar. They were afraid the force of prying open the trunk might shoot shards of metal from the latch into the trunk and we could be injured. Willie, always trying to be a comedian, says “it’s okay Albert’s stomach is up against the latch, nothing will happen to me and Don”. Nobody laughed. It was then we heard a voice far off in the distance. As it got closer we could hear someone saying don’t touch that trunk, don’t touch that trunk. It was Mr. Hooper who had to park at the end of the street and was running to the house with the keys to the trunk. When the trunk popped open the light was so bright it blinded me. I stood up in the trunk and when my eyesight came back to me I was totally stunned. Three cop cars, two fire engines, an ambulance and the Helms Bakery truck, all the people from our block and more standing and just gawking at me.
One more thing… I had totally peed in my pants! My short pants were totally soaked. You could hear Willie behind me complaining that “he got me all wet”. All of a sudden there was a commotion in the crowd. Someone was pushing people out of the way and yelling my name. Alberto, Alberto, Mihito! And like a mamma Grizzly Bear coming to rescue her cub my Mamacita burst through the crowd. She ran up to me, picked me up and hugged me so tight. It was Like she had won the prize turkey at the neighborhood Alpha Beta. I started to cry as I hugged her nick. Everyone cheered and clapped. I will never forget that moment.
She was carrying me home when we got to the Helms Bakery truck. The driver says to her, “something for the little boy?”. She puts me down and takes off her apron and puts it around me, to hide the pee stain shorts. Then we walked home. One hand holding Momma bear’s paw in the other hand holding a cream puff. Does it ever get better than this?
PostScript:
After this shared experience Willie kind of took me on as a surrogate little brother. He being two years older than me, it wasn’t like we could hang out. But every now and then when he wanted to throw the football, out on the street he’d come get me. It was not until I became a freshman in high school that this friendship started to pay big dividends. At that time Willie was a junior and a star football player at Rancho Alamitos High School. He showed me how not to get beat up in the locker room. And a couple of times came to my defense. Every now and then he would let me wear his Letterman’s jacket. How cool was that!!! That is until he found a new girlfriend. Even took me to the drive-in with some of his football buddies.I had to hide in the trunk so they didn’t have to pay for me (I guess some lessons you never learn). Of course I had to be the gofer to the snack bar and they made me walk around the drive-in looking for cars full of girls. I didn’t mind it was fun and I learned a lot of things about what Not to say to girls from those guys. But the biggest favor that came out of this friendship was the one I did for Willie his senior year. A lot more about this later.
What a great story! I’ll have to think back, but right now I can’t think of any memorable story like this from my past! Thanks for sharing it.😉