The Oddball Archives

   ‘First impressions’, as they say, ‘are lasting’. No kidding.

   I had a friend in high school named Bobby Gabbard. He was (or still is…it’s been a while since we’ve connected) exceedingly intelligent. He was one of those guys you wanted to sit next to in class so you could copy his answers in the pop quiz. He was multi-faceted in a lot of areas, so it didn’t matter what class you were sitting next to him, you just wanted to sit next to him. In fact, there was a waiting line to sit next to Bobby Gabbard that went back several years. Because I joined the Public School system in my sophomore year, there was no way I would ever get that honor and had to settle for sitting next to a guy named J.B., who could give you acne just by looking at you.

   It is a shame, therefore, that I first met Bobby in my junior year, coming out of the Boys Room with a pale, sickly look on his face, his eyes red and incoherent, trailing a scent more at home among Skid Row derelicts. He had just concluded an experiment, involuntary I’m sure, on projectile expunging of pre-digested foodstuffs over a large area. There is no doubt he didn’t mean for it to happen. It was simply the chance meeting of him murmuring ‘Sorry’ to me as the initial smell of upchuck curled hair in placed I didn’t know I had.

   From here on, no matter the situation…I may see him next at a round-table discussion of the Middle East on PBS with the McLaughlin Group or accepting a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor…he will always be the pasty-faced kid whose urp would gag dung beetles.

    It simply does not do justice to the man and I apologize for thinking that to this day, a score and a half after the initial meeting.

   Because now I think I know what he felt like.

   We have a men’s room separated by construction into two segments, the ‘new’ side and the ‘old’ side. The ‘old’ side, for some reason as yet properly explained, has one wall occupied by three urinals followed by three toilets…sans doors. That is to say, there are stalls, but they offer protection from peering eyes only from a very sharp angle. There is even graffiti denouncing the absence of total privacy for a man to do his constitutional business.

   And yet, even if there are no other people in either section of the room, I have gotten into the habit of choosing the porcelain seat in the far back corner of the ‘old’ section.

   Up until this point, most of the habitués that overflowed from the ‘new’ section’ would see the feet under the three or four partitions and give a wide berth.

   One unfortunate fellow apparently was too engrossed in the state of his hair to notice me until it was too late. He approached the mirror that was next to my stall and checked himself until his peripheral vision caught movement.

   The micro-second became an eternity…the tall young dark-haired man staring with shock at the paunchy grey-haired hippy dude reading ‘Eat This, Not That’ with his pants and BVDs warming his ankles.

   ‘Oh, man, I am so sorry’, he quickly said.

   ‘No problem’, I responded, further thinking ‘…and please move your eyes up here’.

   To paraphrase Berkeley Breathed, someone is going to seriously need to get rocked to sleep to get that image out of his head.

   I still have plenty of hopes and aspirations to accomplish before God calls me home. I still want to have a speaking role in a movie that is saved to the National Archives. More to the point, I want to be in the film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's 'Breaking Dawn'. The character of Revolutionary War soldier-turned vampire Garrett appeals to me no end. I have begun to see myself standing in the middle of that famous baseball field staring down the Volturi and their minions with his famous cry for fairness and justice.

   All I ask is this...if you see what I see, please see it with my pants up.