True Dat Tuesday #2: Nick Halaby

                My best friend growing up was Nick Halaby.  Somewhere in this world there exists a picture of us on our first play date.  It’s of Nick and I sitting in the bathroom at his house covered in powder, surrounded by strewn makeup, with toilet paper in hand, and soap leaking out onto the floor.  We were preschool classmates at Faith Lutheran and lived down the beach from one another- so it, of course, made sense for our parents to ensure we became fast friends.  This picture, however, was the jump-start to the mischievous childhood Nick and I would lead together throughout our adolescence.

                Nick and I were what you would call troublemakers.  If you ask any of my siblings (especially Megan who often had to deal with our plots and ploys) they will tell you what little shits we truly were.  While we were both contributors to the many scandals that fell into our laps, Nick was always the leader and I was always the follower.  He would often come up with a plan, I would support him 100% (most of the time), and together we would wreak havoc.  And when we were caught, we always went down together.  Sometimes there may have been an, “it was his idea!” or the infamous, “but I didn’t do anything!” that began the discipline, but quickly it would turn into us going to our respective homes and spending a few hours… days… or weeks apart until our next attempt at defeating the adult constraints in our lives.

                Nick was always the more attractive one.  I was a bit chubby, inelegant, and confused as a youngin’ while Nick was always athletic, confident, and had a girlfriend.  I knew I was the less attractive one.  I knew when we went and hung out at the roller rink (which we did nearly every weekend… if not every night during the summer), all the people following Nick around the rink to hang out with him wondered why I lingered around them the way I did.  I always felt out of place.  I had roller skates that had worn wheels that made me slip on the slick court, I couldn’t play roller hockey for the life of me, and when we “shot the duck,” I was always the first one out.  My pants were never as baggy, my clothes didn’t have the “Tommy” logo, and my skates were from Target.  I quickly learned through Nick what money means and how it plays on popularity.

                But the thing about Nick, is that when I was with him, I never felt like I was the "poor" one.  He made me feel rich.  His grandparents owned the skating rink so we’d go and play laser tag for free (most of the time just running around acting like idiots and hardly shooting), we’d have unlimited quarters for the video games, and we’d always get a candy bar and pretzel from the concession stand that we would eat in the back room.  I felt cool when I was with him, like we owned the world.  Everyone wanted to hang out with us when we were there, because if you got into the gang, you got to sit in the Party Room.  Nick gave me that “power” in my years of chunk and awkwardness.

                I learned everything I know about sex with Nick.  We learned together as we secretly watched Skinemax on his little TV he had in his room (I would have never had a TV in my room growing up!) and saw Playboy movies that gave us our first glimpse at the ever confusing breasts and “bush.”  We talked about rumors we had heard regarding all the explicit terms out there to describe doing the dirty.  We discussed in detail what a girl’s body might look like, what we’re supposed to do to make them happy, and how it feels to kiss.  Once we got a bit older, we stayed up late in his garage lifting weights (many times me watching him lift weights), sitting around on his 4 wheelers and sea doo talking about girlfriends and family and the ever present knowledge we'd be going to different high schools soon.  We talked about everything.  There wasn’t a subject missed.

                We also got scared shitless together.  Nick was into hunting for a decent part of our tween years, and so I would often go out with him and we’d try and spot a deer by perching ourselves on a branch over a wheelbarrow of sugar beets.  We saw lots of doe and small fawns, but never a buck.  Until that one day we decided to stake it out on the ground instead of hauling ourselves up into a tree.  We were sitting behind an oak whispering as quietly as we could to one another so as not to scare away the creatures we did not know were around us.  Then we heard it walking through the leaves.  We quickly shut our mouths as our adrenaline started to rush.  And then it heard us.  It was huge (as my memory imagines), and it began pounding its hooves against the ground with a vengeance.  For a moment we were both frozen, grasping each other thinking we were about to meet our doom.  The buck had to have only been a few feet away.  Together we agreed to just make a run for it, so we got up and just started screaming at the top of our lungs as we sprinted through the dark forest to his house, convinced the giant buck with spear-like antlers was hot on our trail ready to ram us up the rear.  We got to his front gate, made it into the protective shelter, and split a pop tart to calm our nerves.

                We did stupid things.  We poured oil on a small campfire and nearly burnt our eyebrows off.  We poked holes in my screen door, threw stones at his parked boat, and tormented baby sitters by locking ourselves in my attic.  We fell through the ice more often than once in sometimes deeper water than we should have been standing over.  We sneaked out of the house to hang out with our neighbor’s cousin from out-of-state.  We rode Nick’s moped over a patch of ice, crashed, and crushed a bucket of minnows all over our snowsuits.  We stole our first sip of whiskey from his dad’s liquor cabinet.  We flipped sea doos, shot songbirds with bee bee guns, and switched people’s mail.  And we got caught just as often as we got away with our sport.

                We also did fun things.  We rode our bikes daily to the marina to sit on giant yachts in the salesroom, Mussel Beach to devour some greasy onion rings and soft serve, our friend, Christina’s house to swim in her pool and veg out in her basement, or Dutch Village to play putt-putt and lie about our hole-in-ones in hopes of winning a free game for the next trip.  We beat Crash Bandicoot together in one night, reading the full description of each villain in the booklet included with the game.  We played power rangers.  We built forts, wandered the swamps, and swam up and down the shoreline until our skin was pruned.  We discussed in depth the reality of Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.  We encouraged each other when the other was feeling down.  We were always there for each other, no matter what.

                Nick is one of the only people in my life I don’t recall having a full fledged argument with.  Sure he annoyed me sometimes, and I annoyed him.  Sure I’d get upset with him for being a jerk, and he’d get upset with me for being lazy, but as far as I can recall we never fought.  If we got upset, we’d go home, watch TV or go play in the sand; and usually an hour later we’d be calling each other again to go run through the woods or build a fire.  We were literally the definition of best friends.

                And then high school happened.  I was a year behind Nick, so he went off to be a big kid before me, leaving me alone at Faith to fend for myself.  Then I went to Western and he went to Valley.  He played hockey and I swam.  He developed his group of friends in Saginaw and I developed mine in Auburn.  Of course we always had summers, but then we started working.  The next thing I knew we would only be hanging out once a month… then only once a year… soon maybe catching up if I drove past while he was walking out of his house.  Then we went to college and we pretty much lost all contact.  I don’t know what made me think of Nick and our amazing friendship growing up together today, but I know that a lot of who I am, the friendships I create, and the understanding I have of the woman’s body is in great thanks to the many lessons we learned together.  He is one of the people who helped me feel confident and important when I felt insignificant and hopeless.  I still consider him one of my best friends, even though we haven’t talked in over a year, because certain bonds can’t be broken.