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| Riley Elementary: Not what it looked like when we attended |
About
that time the movie “Stand By Me” made its theatrical debut. Starring Wil
Wheaton, Corey Feldman, River Phoenix and Jerry O’Connell, and based on the
Stephen King novella “The Body,” the movie tells the story of four friends taking
a journey to find the dead body of Ray Brower, a local kid who went missing. The
movie immediately stuck a cord with me. First off, the four boys swore a lot,
more than I ever did, and I learned many new words watching that movie. My God
the movie was rated R, how the hell did I see it? Oh, yes, the joys of premium
cable television. Thank you, HBO. Second, the main characters were four best
friends, just like my quartet of friends, and right about the same age as us.
Third, the lead character, Gordie Lachance, was dealing with the death of his
older brother, similar to how I was still adjusting to my father’s death.
Finally, I wanted to be a writer, just like Gordie does in the movie. In the
end, after jumping out of the way of a train, running away from a vicious dog
named Chopper, getting covered in leeches and fending off a group of high
school thugs led by Ace and Spider, the boys find Ray Brower but instead of
claiming it themselves, they place an anonymous call to the police with his
location and head home. |
| Read it! |
After
watching the movie I knew had to read “The Body.” And I truly intended to. A
couple times I’d look for it at the bookstore or library, but mostly
unsuccessfully. Then twenty-five years passed. The movie disappeared into the
corners of my brain, and I never read the book. While flipping through TV
channels a few months ago, I came across “Stand By Me” on basic cable. It was
heavily edited for language, but it got me thinking about reading “The Body”
again. I watched for fifteen minutes then turned it off and ordered the book on
Amazon. It sat on my nightstand among the pile of other books I was either
currently reading or about to start (I always have more than one book in
progress at any time). The novella was much longer than I expected, about 180
pages. I read it in a few sittings over a week. Much of the book was exactly
like the movie. Portion of the narrator’s part, , were word for word from the
novella. Often when reading parts of dialogue in the book, I could hear the
character’s saying the lines in my head while reading the words on the page.
There were also a few things in the book that seemed different from what I
remembered of the movie. Was I losing my mind? Had it just been too long since
I’d seen watched the movie that I just didn’t remember it correctly?
So
I headed to my library and borrowed Stand By Me - I was a little shocked they
had it- and watched it again.
Instantly I was zapped back to sixth grade. I think we might have watched Stand
By Me at my birthday party that year. The memories of that movie, that time in
my life, what I felt when I watched it over thirty years ago, I felt it all
over again, even more strongly in some parts. I could feel for Gordie and the
loss of his brother. Gordie felt he had become the invisible boy around his
house, his parents so overcome by grief at the death of Denny that they barely
noticed Gordie was present. My father had died a few years earlier, and I was
still struggling with it. I wasn’t the invisible boy around my house but now
that my mother was working full time while on her own trying to raise three
children, I had more time to myself than I had ever had. Little things would
send me into hysterical crying fits. Nothing felt right, and people were always
asking me how I was, bringing up memories of my father. Everywhere Gordie went
people would bring up some memory of his brother.
We
had our own Stand By Me moment when we were younger. There was a tiny creek
that wandered through our town, a creek so small it disappears for blocks at a
time under street and doesn’t show up on most maps. It might have been called
Mill Creek, or at least that’s what the subdivision it ran through seemed to be
called. One day we decided to follow it to see where it went. We knew it ran
behind our friend Raquel’s house (and part of us probably want to see Raquel in
her bathing suit by her pool). We weren’t going to find a dead body, but it was
about as adventurous as you could get in the suburbs in the 80s.
Our
story didn’t end well. We ran into our Ace Merrill, the bad kid played by
Kiefer Sutherland in the movie (to this day I am still scared of Kiefer
Sutherland because of how well he played Ace Merrill). Some kid and his
sidekick toadie, some 80s bully, fou
nd us as we were following the creek. He
followed us on his bike, threatening to beat us up. We outnumbered him, but he
was bigger than us and let’s face it, the four of us were more Teddy and Vince,
who ran away from Ace in the movie, than Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance,
who stood up to Ace at the climax of the move. Plus, none of us snagged our
dad’s revolver while he was deep into his whiskey.
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| I bought my orignal NES here. |
Eventually
Ace followed us away from the creek and into the Venture (think Target, but
black and white stripes instead of a red bullseye) parking lot. We went inside,
while the bully paced outside the store, waiting for us to come back out. We
used the pay phone to call Jon’s mom to come get us. It was a sad mix of fear
and shame, plus trying to explain why were even at Venture in the first place
was difficult. “You remember the movie ‘Stand by me,’ Mom?”
At
the end of the real movie, Teddy and Verne disappear into the hallways in
junior high and high school and Gordie and Chris see little of them. Gordie and
Chris remain friends through high school but lose track of each other after that.
We find what triggers adult Gordie to think back on his friends is that Chris
Chambers, now a successful attorney, dies breaking up a fight at a restaurant.
Mitch, Jon,
Phil and I thought that would never happen to us, we’d never not be friends. We
were too close at the time. But thirty years later, where are my friends? Where
are Mitch, Jon and Phil?
The
good news is all of them are alive. I haven’t seen or talked to Mitch since
high school graduation. We didn’t have any classes together in high school, we
stopped playing the same sports together and they became just two people I saw
passing in the halls at school, just what we thought wouldn’t happen. With
social media, it’s easy to track people down, at least the ones who want to be
found. Mitch works for a big computer company, and Jon is a high school
teacher. They both live near where we grew up. I never had a falling out with
either of them, we just slowly faded away from each other’s lives. I wonder if
they feel the same way. I wonder if Mitch still has my G.I. Joe action figures
and vehicles that I left at his house in seventh grade when we had an epic
battle in his backyard with our stuff
combined.
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| Cubs Win! Cubs Win! |
Phil
and I still talk and see each other regularly. We go to Cubs games regularly
and last year we went to Washington, D.C. to see the Cubs in the playoffs and
finally saw them win a playoff game together. Phil and I have never gone too
long without talking to each other. In high school We had a few classes
together and still hung out together, not as much as grade school or junior
high. Our birthdays are two days apart, for a few days every year we were
easily reminded of our friendship. Maybe that triggered us to stay in touch. I
don’t know. The world is kind of weird that way.
When I started writing this I reached out to
Phil to see what he remembers about the four of us and Stand By Me”. He said he
and Mitch hung out together in High School, and he hung out with Jon right
after college, but it had been a long time since he had talked to either of
them.
Maybe
Phil and I were closer friends with each other than we were with Mitch and Jon.
Maybe we were the pair, the Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance. Who knows, but
he is still one of my best friends. Life gets complicated as you get older.
More responsibilities, college, girlfriends, moving away, wives, jobs, careers,
children. It’s hard to find time, or to make time, for people you were close to
thirty years ago.
When
I checked in with Phil I said I was glad we were still friends and that we
still hung out and that he took honors biology with me freshman year. We studied
a lot together for that class. I also told him I was glad he didn’t get stabbed
in the neck trying to break up a fight at a fast food restaurant.
His
answer, “Ha, yes, we will hang out for fifty more years. Don’t go breaking up
any fights.”
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reading.
