In my little hometown of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, I had a friend named Ryan. Ryan was the son of divorced parents, a guy trying to survive in high school. When I got to know him, in grade ten, he had carefully gelled dark hair, pushed forward with the ski jump in front. He dressed nicely. Everything was in order. He was always dropping names of the cool kids he was friends with, and talking about the conversations they had together, although it seemed apparent to me that this tight bond he seemed to have with them was not mutually felt. He didn’t really have a group that he hung out with, so he was usually available to hang out with me. I was embarrassed when he would schmooze with popular kids in the hallway–probably partly because I was embarrassed to talk to popular people at all–and try to impress. I wasn’t impressed. But he was my friend.
I wasn’t cool. Bifocals and acne, among other hindrances, make it hard to break in with the hip kids. But I had my posse, and we welcomed Ryan in. That’s how our group seemed to grow: the misfits and crowd floaters made their way over to us, and there was always room. Even stinky Bobby hung out with us, despite a couple of my friends telling him every day to leave because his stench was disgusting (“Bobby, you know how, like, 50% of what we taste comes through our noses? …Well, you’re fucking up my lunch.”). There were enough good vibes around, apparently, to keep us all together, despite abuse.
Ryan was definitely higher up on the cool meter than Bobby, though. On weekends, he would go see his mom in Sudbury. The big city. Her boyfriend had a classic Jag. Twelve cylinders. Ryan had a lot of friends there, he would tell us. We heard about these happening parties Ryan got to go to, and about the seriously cute and popular girls that were crushing on him. He almost made out with one of them once. For real. I should’ve seen her, man. They all thought he was pretty fly (for a white guy). The glorious essence of Ryan, though, seemed to wear thin by Monday, back in little Sturgeon Falls. For some reason, us Sturgeonites were unable to see how awesome he really was. I remember the new video game system he was supposed to get, but that never really materialised. And when the oh-so-hot Reebok Shaq Dunkmob basketball shoe came out, he was going to get a pair on the weekend. For real. From his grandma. On Monday I asked about them, and found out that he got a pair of Saturn’s. I had never heard of Saturn’s, either, but it was fun hearing about Ryan sliding around the court in his new kicks during his basketball game that night.
I liked the guy. He was kind and had a unique wit. He liked decent girls and loved being a little crazy. We were desperate teenagers trying to figure out life. Whenever we shared about the issues that plagued us, he was honest and sincere. It was too bad that he didn’t know he was indeed worth something. Nobody had told him.
Time spent together afforded us the luxury of candidness and comfort. It took a while, but I think that for him a sense of security was cultivated. On one hand he was simply maturing into a man, but there was also a subtle but palpable change in the way he was approaching life and people. I think that with us, the rag-tag group of stragglers, Ryan could see with his spirit that he was not going to wow us or disappoint us based on the circumstances of his life, like whether he was wearing the Shaq’s or the Saturn’s, or even whether or not he was actually a talented ball player. We were just people enjoying a great and quirky little man, whose mom’s boyfriend had a rusty old English car.
