A grown-up N.C. Harrison reflects on his nerdy boyhood.
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My sister, bless her, is on something of a Poke-bing, right now. She is playing Pokemon Black 2, right now, and my days are filled with the familiar theme of the game (slightly updated, in this new decade) and the kind of strange names that confused my grandmother when the first games came out on Game Boy Color so long ago. I sort of feel like old Granny, sitting and listening to her talk about Oshawatt, Tepig, Umbreon and others that I do not recognize. That’s okay, though. It brings her out of her shell and I am an old hand at being confused by newfangled Pokemon; my friend G is a major fan of the franchise and has been spinning my head with her tiny, digital exploits since 2007.
My sister’s new little friends, in addition to making little cheeping and chirping noises that keep us up all night, have been taking my mind back to middle school. Whereas they are now the province of dedicated Poke-masters, back in my day, back in the bad old days, those pocket monsters were the absolute height of cool. Granny got each of us a Game Boy Color—ah, I remember when that was the height of technology!—and we started out, me with a Bulbasaur and her with a Squirtle.
The most fun thing of all was taking the GBC to school, linking it to another friend’s rig and trading Pokemon back and forth with one another. This is how my friend Mike and I killed so many hours, and probably brain cells, during my seventh grade year. We met through the little beasts, during a session of gym class, and formed a great companionship based around them.
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Misfits ruled and I walked in their midst.
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He wasn’t the strongest, most popular or, quite frankly, sanest guy around, but Mike and I had a pretty good working relationship. His first words to me, sitting up against the bleachers, were, “Skookum ugly wuck a muck?” Somehow, in the parlance of seventh grade boys, I understood him and a fast friendship was formed. We talked mostly about video games, anime and professional wrestling—another major fascination for kids during my early adolescence. He was a WWF Attitude guy and I loved the WCW (or, if I was feeling like a little proto-hipster, ECW) but that didn’t matter. We dreamed of growing up and becoming a tag-team, dominating the world of wrestling and never, ever calling it “sports entertainment.” Though he generally kept his thoughts to himself, inscrutable as they were, he did get off a good one from time to time. Once, while we were watching Dragon Ball Z, he heard Piccolo tell Gohan that he had to search for the power inside himself. Mike thought, a moment, and then said, “The power inside is the constipate.” I didn’t know what this meant and I still don’t, but I found it as funny as hell at thirteen years of age.
Mike introduced me, in time, to another guy named Larry. We formed a merry trio of idiots through eighth grade, goofing off with Ranma ½ manga when we should have been doing algebra and trying (failing) to form a heavy metal band. Looking back on those days, I have commented to my mom that we formed a trio like Daria, Beavis and Butthead in the shorts she appeared in. I was a shy, serious, academic overachiever but… I didn’t get along with the other smart kids or the other athletes at that point in my life. I still don’t, come to think of it. I preferred the company of these total goons because, well, I got them and they got me. I was, on one level or another a total goon, too. I didn’t do outwardly dumb things, necessarily, like lighting my farts and calling myself a “fire wizard” or jumping off roofs into a swimming pool, but they sort of entertained me and God knows I egged it on. Misfits ruled and I walked in their midst.
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I preferred the company of these total goons because, well, I got them and they got me.
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I don’t know where Mike is, now, or what he’s doing. The last I knew, when Myspace was all the rage, he was living in Minnesota, had grown his hair out like James Hetfield and worked a few hardcore wrestling matches. My dad, who always found these guys a little bit odd (he wasn’t wrong) said, “He’s probably dead, in jail or in freakin’ Arkham Asylum.” I’d be sad if the first or second was true, but maybe with the last he’d finally be among his people. I saw Larry a couple of years ago, at a Smackdown! taping in South Carolina. We talked about old times, a little bit, and felt awesome in our old school Hardy Boyz and E&C shirts. We talked, mostly, about going to eighth grade prom on a double date with our first girlfriends (Mike opted out) and the three way wrestling match we worked in a backyard. We talked bumps, blading and how girls had finally found us cool, for a few days at least. We may not have run like young, wild furies, to borrow Robert McCammon’s phrase, but by God before us demons did flee, even if they were just the demons of pubescence. I hope that wherever these guys and whatever they are doing that the larger, stronger, darker demons of adulthood are following suit.
Photo–Flickr/Pheezy
