Mark's Pages

August 23, 2004:

He loved Billy Jack. I'm not sure if it was the loner hero fighting for justice, or simply the kung-fu.

A cousin of his was Italian. From him he learned to say vaffanculo! as the ultimate curse, albeit mispronounced bua fon goola. He went around saying bua fon goola, and meaning it, for years.

His favorite song was Bitch by the Rolling Stones.

In Junior High his bowling average was 212. Everyone thought he would become a pro. He said that if he ever bowled a 300 game, he'd deliberately blow the final ball, so that he'd still have something to look forward to.

One day a pair of older boys joined our football game in the park. They were young adults, really. They turned the game into a far more physical experience than we were used to, tackling and grabbing. Later he told me they'd had a particular interest in grabbing. In childhood we all had that experience, at least once.

One year everything changed. He was diagnosed with Diabetes. His father died. My girlfriend was taken away to Florida by her father. I stopped going home. When the dust settled, he didn't live on our street any more. Probably moved in with his mother, but I'd lost her number, and she wasn't in the phone book, and that was that.

For years I returned to the bowling alley, looking in vain for his name on league sheets.