On My Mind

"One, two-three-four-five, Badgers, don't take no jive. Six, seven-eight-nine-ten, back it up and do it again."

That's been running through my head since approximately 8 a.m. this morning. It's basically the only cheer I remember from intramural basketball, or would it be intermural, from sixth grade. There were three schools in our district, so probably five teams total vying for the championship title. We only had one sixth grade class at our school. We were "Biberstein's Badgers," because of course, the name of the team had to start with the same letter as the teacher's name. The previous year, we'd been Mann's Mohawks.

But Badgers? I dunno. Those badgers are known for being some pretty fierce dribblers. Something tells me that collectively, we weren't a bunch of creative sorts.

Onto the point of the remininscing is that I was the cheerleader captain. Yeah, it makes me laugh and wonder what happened to me between then and now. I was outgoing, friendly, and obviously convincing enough to make everyone vote me as captain.

Quite convincing I must have been, and confident, too. I couldn't do a cartwheel. Handstand? Nope. Splits? Hah. I started my career of being a chubby girl a few years before that. There are ways my body didn't bend then and will never bend. I didn't master a cartwheel until I was nearly an adult and it was pointed out that my starting position had my hands at wrong angles. I don't know why I never figured it out, or that no one else ever pointed it out.

I wasn't about to do backbends, either. We had mats in the elementary gym to do tumbling on during recess. A girl named Vicki once spotted me in a backbend and dropped me on my head. Talk about hurting like a son of a bitch. The mats were worn thin and there was concrete under that.

I had the saddleshoes and pom-poms, so that might have been how I was elected into my position. Some moms got together and ordered special cheerleading skirts for us and had t-shirts made with a little cheerleader on front and our names on the back. I'm guessing my dad shelled out a good $25 for intramural basketball, for crying outloud.

The one thing I do remember the most is that a boy named Gary, who I secretly had a crush on, got injured while burning trash. A bottle exploded or something, and he was all patched up on his shoulder, which we could all see while he wore his basketball jersey. He was one of our best basketball players, so there was reason enough to worry. But I worried because I had the warm tinglies for Gary.

The night of our last game, which I think we won, my dad took us to McDonald's. There walked in Gary, still in his basketball uniform. I could see the first aid tape and gauze covering his burns. He walked by, nudged into me, smiled and said hi.

I swooned right there in McDonald's.

Gary was my friend. We sat near each other on the bus. He liked to sing "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Now dat's the workin' of da lord," like from the Merry Melody cartoon in a black boy voice. We played kickball in his yard, had water fights, and generally just hung out and had fun. Well, that was until high school. To say he fell into the wrong crowd is kinda funny since we were such a small community and there really wasn't a lot of trouble to be found or "bad kids." But that's sort of what happened. We stopped talking mainly because while it was fine to talk and joke around on the middle school bus, not a word was uttered on the high school bus. We sat in silence on the ride to school. That's when I lost my friend the first time.

Gary died in 2002 at the age of 32 from a heart attack. From what I heard, he'd gotten his head out of his ass, stopped the drug use, got married, and had a couple kids. He was a little league coach, worked hard, and loved his family. The heart attack, again from hearsay, was attributed to the drug abuse.

I didn't go to the funeral or calling. I couldn't bring myself to do it. And honestly, I don't think anyone knew or even remembered that at one time, Gary had been one of my bestest buds. Those years had long passed, and I was devastated by the news. Not only because I'd lost a classmate, but because it was a huge reminder of my own mortality. There one minute, gone the next.

I still think of Gary sometimes, as his house that he grew up in is just down the street from where I live now. I wonder if he ever knew that I had a huge crush on him, or if he ever pondered why we stopped being friends.

But I do think of him, the sheepish look when he bumped into me at McDonald's, smiled and said hi. That's the Gary I remember, the one who played basketball while I cheered.

"One, two-three-four-five, Badgers, don't take no jive...."