#175. Golem Sundae and Seafoam Articuno (Friday, March 17, 2000)

What was you best day…of seeing the future before the present ended?

The departure of my best friend Harry Liu (#99, #83) to San Francisco came as a shock. One day, we’re dropping him off at his house after a school recorder concert and my mom sees a “For Sale” sign, and two weeks later is his last day of school with us. I barely had time to process the emotional devastation.

That last day did not go well. Harry was in an inexplicably pissy mood through the whole thing, leading to:

Him ending a super-fun (for reasons I no longer understand) four-person session of tossing Chris McCormick (#73) and Jake Ingram (#87)’s Pokémon figurines up into the air and down into the snow, by telling them they’re thrashing our area and to leave—while seemingly retaining possession of those figurines.
Him getting his only ever yellow card from our teacher Ms. Ripley (who was newer, and often tried to be “cool” in getting kids to behave) for doing nothing in the class and mumbling some half-hearted response when she calls him out on it.
While we were waiting for our minivans home, him refusing to help me search for a tuque that I thought I misplaced.

But that day was not his last day in Ottawa. While he’d be taking off school on Friday to pack for the move, we had make a vague assurance to each other—the type that almost never comes through—that we’d meet up one last time before he left. I wasn’t counting on it.

And so, I enter Friday dejected. But instead of sulking at the permanent loss of my friend, I quickly re-attach myself to Chris and Jake and Maksym in the morning—as a continuation of the Pokémon figurine-tossing session that Harry had abruptly ended. (Worth noting here that I was not good at making friends at this point in my childhood, or really in my childhood generally.) We do some figurine-tossing, but I recall most of our time was spent climbing on the snowbank that surrounded that small ice-skating rink that the school day set up in the middle of the field: just talking on and on about some topic or another (my money’s on Pokémon). I was more peripheral to these conversations, but I was included; and on this day, included as someone genuinely part of their friend group.

This goes on through lunch hour, and while I forget the snow-scaling details now, there’s a distinct positive glow through all this—like I had instantly discovered companionship when I thought it’d be lost forever. The only two things I do remember are: (1) a brief moment when (typically prickly) Maksym and I are both staring into the distance and he tells me, almost warmly, “That really sucks, Harry leaving like that. I feel for you,” and (2) Jake holding his Golem (a rock-based Pokémon) figurine embedded in a snowball, and Chris telling him, “You’re going to have a Golem sundae.”

It seems to be heading toward a perfect day for all of us. Then afternoon recess comes, and “hip” Ms. Ripley—for unclear reasons—comes up to Chris and I and tells us (more him) to play with Jake more because Jake thinks he’s mad at him. (Nothing from the hour and a half I spent in their immediate vicinity on this day so far suggested that.) So Chris and I meet up with Jake, and there seems to be a misunderstanding, at one point Jake goes “you have to play with me, or teacher going to be angry”, and then things take a sudden turn where Chris refuses and Jake takes this Chris’s own Pokémon-embedded (with Golem, I think?) snow mini-structure he has built and slaps it onto the ground. Chris is pissed and walks off, and I take that as my cue to leave as well.

Well, ten minutes later, as the recess bell rings, I see a large crowd gathering by the skating rink, with Jake lying on the ground with what appears to be a broken nose. We quickly find out that Chris had just slugged him in the face.¹

With Chris in the principal’s office and Jake in the nurse’s office (I don’t believe it was bad enough for hospital), Ms. Ripley starts a tribunal in the classroom on what actually happened. I eagerly recount the whole thing² in vivid detail, including the “teacher going to be angry” part; and through that oddly feel first the first time that I’ve been officially integrated into their social group. A larger social group at this school beyond just Harry.

Side Note: Chris, shockingly, escapes from this with essentially no punishment. He only has to serve an “in-school suspension” the Monday after, which is just him doing his homework in the principal’s office all day. Jake’s nose seems to be fine on Monday as well, though.

But on this night, just this night, my social group still does include Harry. Because when I call him after getting home from school, he tells me right away he’s good to come over and play Pokémon Red on my emulator with me. And so, for the final hour we ever spend together, we vigorously try to move boulders and surf the rough currents in Seafoam Island to locate the legendary Articuno. (In the middle which, I recount the whole Chris-Jake incident.) And we fail.

And with that, Harry leaves my life forever. But not before—through one chaotic in the day—I saw a brief glimpse that my life could still go on, in its own way, even with his permanent absence.

N.B. For the last four months of the school year, Chris takes on a lighter form of that best friend role. Mainly because he is the one, two months later, who teaches me how to play Magic: The Gathering (#20)—which, in effect, becomes my other best friend for the rest of the school year, and to some extent, the history well beyond…

It’s worth noting here that Jake was a notorious troublemaker, and Chris had his own emotional issues. His most defining character trait was refusing the present in front of the class. Well, not just refuse to present; rather, go up as he was presenting and then just stand there saying nothing while everybody just watched, until after fifteen minutes and multiple prods from the teacher he would start breaking down in tears (while still standing in the exact same place).
At one point asking Wesley (#74), who saw part of it, to act in a simulation of it with me. With him, presumably, being Jake with his nose fake-getting broken. He was clearly confused and/or not up to my energetic tempo, so I just did it myself.