Bullethead
By Damon Zirkler
I remember the first time that I saw him. He was sitting there in the last row of our second grade classroom, over by the windows. He was a new student to Saint Agnes--the rest of us had already gone through the first grade together, and he was invading out little group. He came a couple weeks into the year. He had the brightest red hair that I had ever seen! It was almost like his head was on fire. I saw that he also had freckles all over his face, and also his arms. He just sat there in his chair, wearing that very guilty-looking smirk that I would have to get used to. He almost looked scared, yet he had a smile. All of my friends were out playing Frisbee at lunch that first day, and Ralph came up to us, and asked if he could join in. We let him play and this was the very first of many activities that Ralph and I would do together.
After a while, Ralph and I were doing everything together. It seemed like we were almost brothers, we were always together. One day during the summer Ralph called me at home and told me he was going to have a sleep over in his backyard. Almost a camp out, except it was in the middle of the city! I got there after dark, and all of our friends were there already. The tents were pitched, and the parents were gone. After a while we all started getting silly and stupid as kids do, and Ralph ran inside the house and came out with a handful of firecrackers. I'd never seen any before, and I had to ask what they were.
"They're firecrackers, stupid!" he yelled back to me.
"Are we supposed to have these?" I asked timidly. I was really nervous because I knew that we probably weren't supposed to be playing with them.
"Why not? What harm will they do? It's fun... Watch!" He then pulled out a lighter out of his pocket, and lit one of them on fire. He bolted and hid, as did all of the other kids. "Run Damon!" he yelled.
I ran and hid behind one of the bushes in his front yard. Bang!!!! Slowly, all of the kids went over to look at the remains of it. I stayed hidden for fear that one of the neighbors would come out of their house and get us in trouble. After a while they started asking where I was, and I came out of hiding and Ralph asked where I'd been, "Oh, I just went to the bathroom."
"Did you see it?"
"Yeah, it wasn't that spectacular."
"Well, wait till you see this one!" Just then he took about ten of the firecrackers and tied them together. He then said, "You all ready?" Everyone nodded their heads as he lit the end of the bundle, "RUN!"
Again, I hid in the same bush. P-O-P, P-O-P, P-O-P!!!! It took longer before everyone came out of hiding this time. "Wow, that was COOL!" Ralph shouted, "Let's do it again!"
"I don't know, Ralph," I said hesitantly, "we could get into a lot of trouble."
"Shut-Up Moron. If you're such a baby, you can just go home to your Mommy!"
"I'm not a baby," I said defensively. I had to do something to stand up to Ralph, being as how all my other friends were there.
"Are too! OK, Run" and he lit even more this time.
I was starting to get bored with this, and so I just went around to the back, and laid down in the tent. Ralph came around later and we just sat there and talked for a long Time. The other guys were out doing something, and so we didn't hear them at all. We started talking about the guys and who we liked and who we didn't like, and it was just a very pleasant Time together. He apologized for making fun of me earlier, and I accepted, and life went on.
Ralph and his family moved away not too long after that night. We both vowed not to get out of touch, and to write. It lasted for about two months, and then we started to forget about each other, and out writing dwindled to about 2 times per year--around Christmas Time, and around the other one's birthday.
After two or three years, Ralph and his family moved back to Phoenix, and I didn't know. His mom called my mom on the phone, and asked if I'd like to go downtown and visit the Museum of Science and Technology. I'd never heard of it before, but my mom had. She told me that I could go, and that weekend Laurie, his mom, picked me up at home, and we were off to the museum. We spent hours there, he played with everything. His hands were always on something. It was a good thing that this was one of those museums where you're allowed to handle things, otherwise we'd have gotten into quite a bit of trouble. We just ran around the place as if we owned it! We must have spent five or six straight hours there. We talked and had fun as if he'd never been gone.
After we visited the museum, his mom decided to take us up to the top of the Hyatt Regency Hotel to sit in the Compass Room Restaurant for a while. We had to get into these extremely tall glass elevators. I used to be deathly afraid of heights (and I still am to some certain extent), and Ralph was always the adventurous one. I sat at the bottom of the elevator, afraid to open my eyes. My legs wouldn't hold me up. Ralph, being the wonderful caring youth he always was, started laughing at me, and making fun of me. We sat at the top of that tall building looking out the windows for much over an hour. It was one of the most beautiful sights in the world to a young kid who had never been up that high.
Not long after the day at the museum, I found out that Ralph and his family were going to be moving again. We were separated for about another three years. We wrote sporadically and after a while I didn't see him, or hear from him until the summer after eighth grade, when I received a letter from him and his mom. He had written a part of the letter, and where he said that was moving back to Phoenix just in Time to start high school. He also stated that he'd be going to the high school near his old house. It took me a couple days after reading his letter to realize that it was the same high school that I had enrolled at. I excitedly wrote him back, and told him this, and we both got extremely anxious to be going to the same school again, after so many years.
It didn't take long for us to get reacquainted and become best of friends again. High school started, and we did everything together. We'd go to the football games together; we’d go to the dances together. One of us was always at the other's house all of the Time. Again, it seemed like we must have been long lost brothers.
Near the end of freshman year, Ralph told me about a camping trip that Jack, his stepfather, was planning with a few old dirt-biking buddies of his. I got excited because it had been a long Time since Ralph and I had been camping together (not since before he moved away the first Time). As the day drew nearer, we started getting our gear together. On the Friday that we left, I went directly over to his house after school. We drug everything into the front yard so that when Jack arrived with the trailer (he had been working temporarily in Tucson, and had the travel-trailer with him), we could pack it up and head on out. Jack rolled in at about 5:00. Ralph and I packed the Truck and the Trailer while Jack ate dinner and bathed.
Ralph and I were told that we had to sit in the back of the pick-up truck the whole way up there, which didn't sound so bad until we opened up the tailgate and realized that Jack had stuck one of the dirt bikes in there with us. Ralph and I somehow made ourselves comfortable through all the junk in the back, and off we all went into the mountains of Arizona. It took us almost three hours before we arrived. It was around 10:30, and all the other guys came up earlier that day, and picked out a campsite for us. When we got there, they were all sitting around a campfire, waiting for us. Robert directed Jack, while he parked the trailer, and Ralph and I took our tent and walked at least fifty yards from the other campsite. We always liked to go off away from everyone else because it gave a sense of freedom. We pitched the tent without help from a light or lantern in about ten minutes (after all, we had been Boy Scouts).
Those three nights we were up there, before we went to bed, we'd just lay there discussing all sorts of topics, ranging from the most beautiful place we'd ever been to the most beautiful girl we'd ever seen. Actually we spent a lot of Time talking about girls that weekend. It was the first Time I'd opened up to anyone about who I liked and who I didn't. It was a turning point for me. I'd never been comfortable talking to guys about girls. And to a point, I still am not comfortable talking to guys about girls (however, I can tell some of my female friends everything, all the details, and yet still feel totally comfortable).
Time flew by us, and our Sophomore Year we had two classes together: English and Economics. English and Economics that year were two of the most fun classes I've ever had, yet at the same Time the most challenging. We had Mrs. Buehler for English, and Ralph and I sat in the same row. It seemed as if neither of us could ever keep quiet in that class, and the teacher was always telling one of us to hush up. She pushed us, perhaps too hard, but that was the class that I got the most satisfaction out of doing the work in out of all the classes that I've ever had. Ralph and I would sometimes stay up late at night helping each other with that night's homework for Mrs. B's class. Economics on the other hand was a total blow-off class, and Ralph, Josh (another of our best friends), and I would play the box game most of the Time. There were Times however when the teacher, Mr. Cheney would actually try to teach us something, and still Ralph and I wanted to keep talking and joking, and well, Mr. Cheney wouldn't allow that. Cheney split us up one day, yet Ralph and I kept talking across the room, and Cheney turned to him and said, "Shut-up, Bullethead." Ralph had this bedazzled look in his eyes. I think for the first Time in his entire life Ralph was speechless. He sat there quiet for the remainder of the class, like a statue, pondering the meaning of "Bullethead." Cheney kept that as a nickname for Ralph for the remainder of the semester.
About two-thirds of the way through the first semester of our sophomore year, we found out that his mom was being transferred to Albuquerque. That meant that we'd be separated once again. We tried to make the best of our remaining Time. We went to the movies almost every day, and stayed at each other's house. And then he moved away. We didn't even try to fool ourselves by vowing to write, and of course, we didn't attempt to write much either. I only talked to him twice in the next two and a half years. He called me on the telephone, and each Time, we talked for over two hours. The second Time we made these grand plans for a camping trip similar to the one two years before. We picked a meeting spot, and everything was set. The day before the camping trip my grandfather passed away, and my family had to forgo the camping trip and drive out to Florida for my grandfather's funeral and to console my grandmother. I called Ralph, and the both of us were very disappointed that the plans fell through, and we vowed to try it again sometime. It hasn't happened yet.
About two weeks before graduation my senior year, there was a phone call, "Hello, is Damon there?"
"Hold on," my sister said as she passed the phone on to me. "Make it quick, I'm expecting a call."
"Hello?"
"Hi, Damon, this is Ralph."
"Ralph who?"
"Ralph Jenkins."
"No shit!?"
"No, man, what's up?"
I was surprised to hear from him. And we just talked for a while, and then he got to the real reason he called. He said that he would be graduating the week before I did, and said that if he could crash at my house, he would come out for graduation to visit and "shoot the breeze" with everyone. I was ecstatic. I about hit the floor from shock.
I couldn't wait. I told everyone at school that Ralph was coming. And when he finally came out, after more than two years apart, we were back in the swing of things. Our friendship was back to the way it was before he left in less Time than it takes to walk from the gate at the airport to the car. We were back to our usual teasing, joking attitudes of old before we got home.
We went everywhere during that week. We were out every night until well after 2:00 am. We went to movies. We went bowling. We went dancing. We did everything that week. I even almost completely forgot about my girlfriend during that Time, but I figured she'll be around for longer than a week (and we were going on a cruise the following week anyway, and we could spend Time together there), and Ralph wouldn't be. That week just flew by so quickly, that by the Time Saturday came, we weren't ready to wake up and catch a plane. We woke up an hour late (due to the late night we had had). We threw some clothes on, ran to the car, and did about 90 miles per hour to Sky Harbor. We jumped out of the car, and skipped to the gate (after all, this is Ralph we're talking about and he just couldn’t be normal and run). "Well, I'd best be getting into that plane now."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Well, take it easy."
"Yeah, you too."
He turned around and disappeared into the walkway leading to the plane. Later that day, I was back at the airport waiting to fly off for our cruise, and I didn't even think about Ralph too much until recently. Just recently, I truly realized how good of a friend Ralph really is, and how much I miss him. Maybe I should sit down and write him a letter today.
Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent.