Blog Post #124 - Invisible Boy Made Friends
I remember my senior project in my high school TV Productions class was a video about my friends. In retrospect, it was a stupid idea. I guess I got a decent grade, but when it was judged, I heard that the video really didn’t make a lot of sense unless you knew the people that were featured. They were right. At the time, that little circle of people we all try to create was all that really mattered to me at the time. That was also bad news for me.
Instead of criticizing myself for that time (anymore) I found myself understanding why it happened. I think it is an exercise in self-love, or forgiveness, or wisdom, or something you can find on Oprah’s bookshelf. As you get older, memories creep their way to the fore. It’s as if they are being shaken loose from an old photo album. You see a photo you haven’t thought about in decades. Sometimes it floors you.
The memories of my childhood, from about 14 to 18, are mixed. Some bad, some good. Anything under 13 is almost certainly depressing. They are sad. They aren’t singular traumatizing events so such as they are a cumulation of a very young life spent almost completely alone.
The memory was this: 1984 or so. My parents would occasionally go over to the home of a work friend. They would hang out in the backyard, drinking beers and having fun. My brother would probably be back there trying to get some attention of his own. But I would be in this strange living room, sitting a large couch by myself, watching an old TV with 3 channels. For hours, I would sit there. That was normal to me. The saddest part? I would look forward to going. I could sit in a different home and watch nothing on a different TV.
Our parents left us alone most of the time, plus my parents worked long hours. Earlier than the previous memory, I have a few of my brother and I being completely alone on Friday nights. This was in one of the shittiest neighborhoods in Orlando. (We would one day live in the shittiest.) We lived in an apartment complex and would stay up because our parents would hang out after work on paydays. I remember a neighbor that made us soup one night, probably at nine o’clock. I was eight.
One bonus about living in Orlando was that my parents were both Disney employees and we would get to go to the park a couple times a year for free. When I mean ‘we’, I mean my parents would drop my brother and I off at 9:00 when the Magic Kingdom opened and then would pick us up at night. They didn’t spend the day with us. We wandered the park alone with a few bucks for lunch. We did have some fun, but we were still alone.
I’ve written before about feeling invisible. I have cobbled together these memories plus a few revelations from my mother that this started very early. You see, I have an inherited mental condition. It makes other people feel uncomfortable, and even today, you can be ostracized and isolated because of it. I was born…smart. From what I gathered, my family noticed very early. I was around 4 or 5 when my father withdrew from me. I don’t know how my extended family reacted. Although my grandmother celebrated it, even if she didn’t exactly know what it was and what it meant. She liked me. But because my intelligence wasn’t embraced, I didn’t know how to deal with it out in the world, especially at school. So, again, I was on my own.
So, until I was 10, it was me, my little brother, and my TV.
Getting back to my friends. We have all read one thousand greeting card-quality quips about the importance of friendship. We’ve watched all the tear-jerker movies about true friends. We all want them and feel lucky to have them. My reason for writing this is how my friendships actually saved me from God-knows-what hellish existence.
I went to a different school every year until fifth grade. Different towns, different states. Fifth grade was a big one. I was now in a nice school in a decent neighborhood, and I would be starting my first year of gifted class. Gifted class was one day a week with a bunch of dorks like me, doing projects and being smart. In my normal classes, I was approached by a kid in my class while we were out playing in recess. He asked me about my T-shirt, and because he did that, I had someone to talk to. Because he asked me to come hang out with him at his house and play with Star Wars toys, I had somewhere to go and goof around. His name is Eric, and because I am eternally grateful, I am still friends with him to this day. That was almost 36 years ago.
In gifted class, I had a similar experience. I met a few people like me (a few of them were girls! What???) and became friends with one of them at the same time. Sam recognized we had similar dorkiness and we liked to be funny. I also got invited to his house to hang out and listen to Duran Duran records. We are still friends, too. I know his kids and I’m anxious to meet his grandkids. (Huh?) It was great. My whole life was invisibility and waiting for The A-Team to come on, and now I had two friends.
They did this. They made this happen. I would have never done it. I would have to wait years to talk to a girl or even try to a kiss a girl. I was awkward, painfully shy, cross-eyed, nerdy-smart with a complete lack of self-esteem. With a couple friends, I had a chance.
The teenage girl who would one day become my wife was one of the few people I forged a friendship with. It was a big deal in my life, to have girls as friends. It would also mean a lot of relationship construction would be completed when we actually started dating, which was a plus. High school was drudgery and aimlessness. I had no idea what to do, and no guidance from anywhere. Eventually, that time is over and your friends move on with their lives. They move away, get jobs, start families. Most people understand this, but when no one is looking out for your interests, the most obvious shit can be a shock.
A shit-shock.
I kept close the best I could, with phone calls and letters and mix tapes. I’m pretty good at that stuff. The only other person I had ever traded letters with was my cousin Denise. We’ve never lived in the same place and we’re the same age. I guess that is what you had in the days before Facebook. You’d get a letter from your cousin a few times a year and you would go back and forth, bitching about life and cracking jokes about whatever. I come from a large family, and she was really my only tether to them. I still have every letter I received from her, and again, we are still in touch. Although, now we text the Three Amigos references.
My sense of invisibility influenced nearly every decision. I dreamed of doing stand-up comedy. (This crowd will laugh and love me.) I wanted to teach college (These students will pay attention to me.) I want to write books. (They’ll all love my stories and think I’m awesome.) When I had children, the invisibility had a difficult time raising his head. You are the sun and the moon to your kids. I loved it and I loved being a father. I loved the attention and giving it right back to them. You truly get a chance to right some wrongs when you have kids. I don’t know how good of a father I was, but my kids never felt unseen or unheard. I probably overdid it, to be honest.
Amy and I have been together for a little over 26 years. We’re about to be 46. You can probably imagine the topic of attention has come up once or twice. She is just one person. She is an awesome person and a wonderful partner to have in life, but no one human can provide the amount of attention I need. The hole is just too damn big. My job is to remember that, and her job is to remember I am trying to tame a tenacious beast.
That’s where friends come in. I have spread it around the best I can. My friend Jo and her brother Andrew are the only ones out here in the Pacific Northwest. Jo endured raising kids right alongside me for years, and we both have similar needs to be seen and appreciated. It is nice to get to see someone in person and chit chat, too. Texting is nice, but it’s just you know…texting. Another friend from high school communicates this way. I think technology helped me keep in touch with Andy, who lives about 3000 miles away. Having a conversation once or twice a year is cool, but it’s the little back and forth of dumb jokes and observations that I always missed. When you meet someone cut from the same cloth, it’s the shorthand you develop that is most appreciated.
I’m not just thankful for these people in my life. I needed them. I am indebted to them because of my condition. My dream is to be gregarious and memorable and make an impact on people. But in this stage of the game, I don’t know if I’m wired that way. This could be it for me. Self-promotion is a struggle, socialization is as foreign as the rings of Saturn and I don’t have a network of people to access to increase my circle.
I am living proof that learning how to be a friend, or at the very least, reaching out to someone else can change lives. It can save lives.