Dragons Live Forever, But Not So Little Boys

It’s been a long time since I was a little boy. In many ways, my mind is stuck in those days. In others, I have to really think hard to bring it all back. Some ideas are forged together strangely—from the heat and pressure, I guess. I saw the movie Pete’s Dragon in a theatre as a young little boy. For some reason, whenever I hear the song “Puff the Magic Dragon” I think of Pete’s Dragon. Part of me wants to see the movie again, so I would actually know what it was about, but a bigger part wants to just leave those scattered images right where they are, as they are. But, there’s much, much more behind that thought.

See, I had a friend named Pete, too.

I first remember Pete from first grade. My desk was right behind his. We both had the same color of red hair, which is that un-mistakeable color of red. Not a redish hue of blond, or a lightish brown. Red. Leprechaun red. Other people in our families had the red hair, too, but no one else in the school did. Granted, it was a small school, but the impact was the same. Evidently, red heads look funny to other kids. Although, anything that is not like everything else is “funny” to kids and subject to ridicule. Maybe everything is subject to ridicule. I don’t know. Either way, we did not enjoy being red heads. Adults seem to enjoy us little red headed kids, but that mostly just made it worse.

Our houses were nowhere near each other, so Pete and I only spent time together in school and with the other kids around. But, again, it was a small school, so the whole class playing together was still a pretty close-knit group. We had the most fun a recess. For many years, of those early years, the fad of the day was marbles. Now, I can say marbles and everyone knows what I’m talking about, but the way we played marbles and what it all meant was probably different than the rest of the world. For one, we played one at a time, and we always played for keeps. In other words, I would challenge one of my marbles against one of yours. And much negotiation took place in this process. We were always trying to win better marbles, so I was negotiating to try and get you to wager a marble that impressed me. And you would be doing the same thing. Some of the prized possessions were what we called “boulders” which were particularly large (about 1 inch diameter or slightly larger-- bigger was better) and among the most elite of these were “steelies” (actually large ball bearings, but they were large!... and shiny!... and didn’t scratch… and they had that great heft to them! ) or “clearies” which were the translucent, one color type. They looked like rounded gem stones. Beautiful. Of course, envy played a gigantic role in all of this. Without knowing anything else about a person, we sized them up by their marble bag. Pete and I (and many of my other elementary school friends) played and traded many marbles.

We played football a lot! For one thing, this is North Dakota we’re talking about. We have snow 6 months out of the year some years. Also, football season begins when school does and lasts just over half the school year. We loved to watch it, but mostly we loved to play it in the snow. Snow on the ground, even a mere few inches somehow makes landing softer. The sliding also leaves fewer stains on clothes and scratches on skin. We played all our rough and tackle games in the long snowy winters of ND. It was awesome! If you know how to enjoy it, winter is really fun.

Back in those days it seemed like the Pittsburg Steelers and/or the Dallas Cowboys were in the Superbowl every year. I grew up a Steelers fan. We had a conveniently even split in our class. So, we almost always played Steelers vs. Cowboys football at recess. Back then, we had as many as 3 recesses a day. The morning and afternoon recess was only 15 minutes. Lunch was half an hour. That seems paltry as an adult, but was plenty of time for a game as kids. Some of those years, I spent time as the QB of our team. It was an informal process as to who was QB. We pretty much based it on success. As long as we were winning or moving the ball, we stuck with what worked. When things went downhill, we’d unceremoniously fire that guy and quickly decide who we thought had the mojo to win. Call it a pecking order. Call it a “team captains picking order” or whatever. Young boys know what’s what.

We had no pass rush. The QB had to stay behind the line of scrimmage at all times. Everyone else was a receiver. That’s how we played. Everyone on defense was covering a receiver. Pete was an excellent receiver. Some guys just know how to get open. One way to do that is to “go long.” Pete was good for that. It’s actually pretty hard to cover someone that is just running as fast as they can. If you run ahead of them, all they have to do is stop and turn around to catch the ball. If you run behind them, they QB just has to lead them. Pete was good for both. But, mostly he was just plain committed to catching the thing. If he had to jump on your head to do it, he would. If he had to dive for the ground and load his sleeves and collar with snow, he would. Receivers like that make QBs look good. Any time you can consistently go long and make a successful catch, that’s going to be a fun game. Ah, the glory days! They’ll pass you by…

We played basketball some. For the longest time, we did not have the proper equipment on the playground. When we reached junior high, we got a new principal and he made some great changes from our perspective. Early fall and late spring provided some decent basketball weather. Basketball is hard to play in mittens, boots, and coats. The great thing about playing basketball with Pete was that he was fearless. We called him Pistol. Yeah, as in Pistol Pete, but not really. We called him Pistol because we could get him to shoot from anywhere. It didn’t matter where he was on the court or if he was well defended. All we had to do was yell, “Shoot it!” and he would. It was more fun than a real game. We were not that good, and we were often congested on the court. This is where a trained player or coach would go into the supreme aspects of basketball as a team game which creates opportunities to get open and find the open player. Whatever. We only had 15 minutes. We wanted to watch Pete launch it from half court with a hand in his face. That was fun! He actually made several of them, too.

Another improvement that principal made was computers. At first, we only had two. They were set up in the science room and we had to sign up to use them. It was a huge issue, logistically, for anyone in our family to not have to ride the bus home, which left right after school let out, basically. Same thing for “before school.” That was the only access time (because science classes were going on at recess). But, it did happen. I use to get so excited that the first thing I had to do was go to the bathroom. It was a big deal. Some of us used to take babysitting jobs just because the parents had a computer that we could use once we got the kids to bed. That was our payment. And we actually thought it was a pretty good deal. A few years later, my two brothers and I pooled our money together and bought that computer. It was an Apple IIe. Over the next few years, I learned and did much programming on that thing. My greatest accomplishment was a program I called Draw. I figured out how to make a glorified Etch a Sketch. The graphics were a poor definition in those days—about as good as an Etch a Sketch. So, holding down the “m” key to draw a line from any desired point on the screen down, made sense. I was old enough to get the formulas right to make a circle when I hit “c” and entered my desired diameter. It’s not much of stretch from there to make an arch or an oval. You get the idea. The biggest problem was that the world has never been sold on Apple computers. All of my programming skill was mostly useless by high school.

Pete was smarter than that. Pete used the computer to play games. One of his favorites was this game where he was a gun that arched 180 degrees left to right. Out of the sky would descend little paratroopers. The objective was to shoot the plane and the paratroopers. You could succeed either by shooting the trooper himself or dissevering him from his parachute and watching him splat to the ground. It was pretty fun. But, all video games are inherently fun. It goes without saying. Pete took a perverse pleasure in that gun, though. He made his own sound effects for good hits and the various deaths of his enemies. It was just as fun to watch and listen to him play as to play myself. He once joked that the game represented his ideal life: just him on his own island and a great big gun!

Pete and I and our small class of mates mostly lost track of each other around high school. Our small school only had nine grades. Today, it is only an elementary school. So, we all went to the one big high school with everyone else in town. We had more people to meet and know. We had more opportunities and interests. And we had the greater freedom that high school provided, including the ability to drive out of town from time to time. We started running in different circles. But, we still knew each other. We still bumped into each other and generally knew what each other was doing. We just were not doing it together for the most part.

After high school, Pete went into the military. I went to college. I saw him a handful of times when we both happened to be “home.” Eventually, we both ended up living in our home town again. But, we were almost strangers by that time. Our circles had grown further and further apart. Young men have other things on their agendas, if you know what I mean.

And then one day, the whole town heard the tragic news. You see, Pete had been murdered. By his own brother, who was living with him at the time. It was a murder/suicide, actually. Gunned down, through the apartment window, in fact. In a small town, any killing is a big, tragic story. This one was even bigger than that.

Their apartment is very near the high school. I see that house very often to this day. That and many other things often remind me of Pete. People like me write about stuff like that. It’s just what we do.

Pete was killed about 7 years ago, as of this moment. At our class reunion, we planted a tree to his memory, with his family. To anyone other than us, it’s just another tree in the park. To anyone other than us, we are just more faces in the crowd, small heads in old pictures, names in old books, and memories in old heads. But, memories are timeless. Memories live forever.