When I was in 4th grade I knew this kid named Joe and he was from Tennessee. We weren't like best friends or anything but he was friends with the same guys I was friends with and so we kind of always did things together. I mean it's not like I didn't like him, he was an okay guy and all. His mom was real pretty I thought. She went to high school with Elvis Presley, or anyway that's what he told everybody. It's not like anyone was really that much into Elvis. Except this one kid whose parents had all this Aloha from Hawaii memorabilia, but that was kind of weird and way off the subject.

 

Joe moved away I think in the 5th grade. I don't remember when exactly it was and it's not like I marked the event or anything because like I said we weren't that close. I never saw him again. But this one time I went to Boston when I was like 20 years old and I ran into a guy who used to be best friends with Joe and he told me that Joe had really long hair and played in some band in Houston. They were a moderately successful band and I used to hear their songs on the radio I think but I forget who they were. I wasn't really impressed, anyway.

 

Joe had a cousin named Ellen or Helen or something like that who went to school with us but she was a year ahead of us. She was real pretty I thought. She had this skin that was all smooth and she had blonde hair and all. That's all I remember about Joe's cousin. Well, except that her mom played the piano, and once my friend Edward and I were moving the piano and we ran it accidentally into the fire alarm on the wall and it set off the fire alarm and the school evacuated and the nuns got mad.

 

And then this one time when Joe was moving away we planned a surprise party for him and we all bought Star Wars action figures for him. He had most of them already though. This other kid who came to school with us the next year said he knew the guy who played R2D2 and that it was a little kid but no one believed him because it was not a little kid it was a midget.

 

 

One of the kids who hung around with us was Lithuanian and he works for the FBI now. I don't know too much about what he does now but he was always pretty serious when we were kids. The weird thing is that when we were kids one of my other friends who works for Ted Turner now had a dad who was a trial lawyer and he used to talk all this legal talk to another kid I knew named Danny when Danny was in law school, and the trial lawyer guy really helped him study. I knew Danny because his mom was the 5th grade homeroom teacher of me and the Lithuanian kid, but I didn't know him all that well because he was like 7 or 8 years older than me or maybe more. But anyway Danny went to work at the U.S. Attorney's office and he was prosecuting a case and he like met the Lithuanian FBI guy and the guy was all like "Dude, I know your mom!" and Danny was all "Dude, no way!" and the Lithuanian FBI guy was like "Way!" And it was all so weird because I was friends with the Lithuanian dude and the one guy who works for Ted Turner whose dad helped Danny when he was in grade school.

 

So anyway where was I? Oh yeah, in Boston this guy was telling me about Joe but I like totally didn't care because I like barely even remembered him except that him and the guy in Boston were both really really short. When I was in Boston all these guys were smoking pot and we went to this party on a roof which I had never done before. I was staying with this guy I knew from 7th grade and this other kid whose brother was friends with us. His name was Brian. I wasn't smoking pot so after the party I went to watch TV and Brian caught this chair on fire. He felt bad about it so he asked me to help him clean it up so I did but later we got in a fight and I broke his hand. Or maybe that was another kid I don't really remember. I missed my flight home, which sucked.

 

 

Well technically, I didn't miss the flight. It was overbooked and I couldn't get on. So the airline gave me a free pass and like four months later I flew to Atlanta and my friend picked me up at the airport and I went out and got drunk. I guess I was kind of feeling down because this girl I knew ever since high school was getting married and I liked her a lot. She used to go out with this guy who had cystic fibrosis and then one time me and the guy who picked me up from the airport went to a Bible Study and we met this guy who had cystic fibrosis and my friend was all like "Dude, that's the guy who went  out with that girl whose wedding you went to!" and I was all "Dude, no way!" and he was like "Way!" And you know what's weird is that when I went out and got drunk that weekend I met up with the Lithuanian kid and that was the last time I ever saw him. He was finishing college and his dad was moving because his mom had just died which totally sucks. This guy's grandmother lived with him and she spoke 12 languages, which was like totally weird because we could barely speak the one we know. And you know what else was weird about this guy, his favorite superhero was Thor. Thor sucks except he had this one really cool villain named The Absorbing Man who turned into whatever he touched, like if he touched a brick wall he turned into brick. That was a totally cool superpower except I always wondered why did he not just turn into air because air is like all over the place. Anoher thing I remember about the Absorbing Man is that when I was in the 9th grade this kid Nick got everyone to write "The Absorbing Man" on the ballot for homeroom representative on the Student Council. Except a lot of people thought it would be much funnier to vote for me. I think the Absorbing Man won but I still had to do it because I was a real person and he wasn't.

 

 

Technically I guess I was on the student council my whole freshman year even though I only went to one meeting. The kids there were all motivated. They were like aliens to me. So I left early and went and got stoned. It was one of the first times I ever got stoned. I never really liked it, and I've probably only been stoned less than 100 times my whole life and the last time was more than 18 years ago. Even though I knew a lot of kids who did it all the time and once there was a kid who no one liked because he stabbed a kid that everyone liked and he totally stabbed him for no reason at all and so he got beat up like 5 times for it, but in between there this one time someone told him they had some cocaine and so he sniffed it and it was just crushed-up Alka Seltzer and his face turned all red and all this foam started coming out his nose and it was so totally hilarious!

 

 

But anyway back when I used to hang around with this Lithuanian kid I remember once I told this nun that my grandmother was Lithuanian and she thought I was just saying it to make fun of the Lithuanian dude but I totally wasn't because my grandmother came over from Lithuania and lived in Northern Pennsylvania right down the street from an Irish family and the Irish family was my other grandmother's family, and then my Irish grandmother moved to New Jersey and my Lithuanian grandmother moved to Philadelphia and then my Irish grandmother moved to Philadelphia too and then my parents met and got married and my one grandmother was all like "Dude, we were neighbors in Northern Pennsylvania when we were kids!" and my other grandmother was all like "Dude, no way!" and my other grandmother was all "Way!"

Grandmothers Calling Each Other Dude