the green glow in the ivy

The little lady and I spent Independence Day with my parents. As has been the case in previous years, my nieces and nephews got to play with sparklers as part of our traditional pool part/barbecue celebration. I'm not big on fireworks and typically don't like playing with or watching them, so my experiences with them are pretty limited. Anyway, watching my nieces and nephews took me back to a memory of one time I did like playing with them, and the circumstances surrounding that memory.

Chase Eckhardt (name changed) was a geek in all ways literal and traditional: flat top haircut, ears that stuck out too far, big tortoiseshell glasses, scrawny, made weird comments at often inappropriate times. He obviously wasn't popular and was very self-conscious, so he frequently told unusual stories and bragged about his parents' wealth in order to compensate. Unfortunately, his stories weren't true and his parents weren't wealthy, and everybody knew it. This only added to his geek non-mystique. People would frequently yell "ECKHARDT!" with a hick accent when they saw him. This wasn't meant to welcome him, as you can imagine. You may have seen movies where someone starts running too fast on a treadmill and gets thrown off of it. Hard to believe this happens, but it actually did happen to Chase...only, he wasn't thrown off the treadmill; he landed face first on the treadmill and got stuck. The rapidly moving belt scraped up his whole face really badly, and he had a big scab across his face for a few weeks. You can imagine how other people at school reacted to this.

Chase become quasi-friends with a few of my friends and I in the sixth grade due to a debate project that we all worked on. He was on one side of the debate, and I was on the other. My friends were on either side. This was before we had the internet, of course, and since the subject of the debate was nuclear weapons/mutually assured destruction (yes, quite the topic for sixth graders), we'd frequently end up at the library at the same time, reading and/or fighting over the same small pool of books on the subject. Chase's parents saw this as an opportunity to expand Chase's group of friends from zero to a handful, so they started to invite us over to his house. This continued after the debates were over, and into the summer. I think I must have been nicer to Chase than the other guys, because after a while I was the only person there. This made me a bit self-conscious because Chase was such a geek and I didn't want to be seen with him (which is quite funny since I was a total nerd, something I didn't come to accept or be proud of until I was in college), but he wasn't such a bad guy once you got beyond his ridiculous stories and outrageous lies. So, I'd always accept invitations to his house. And, his parents would spend the money--free lunches, a birthday party at Magic Mountain, etc. This is where that sparkler memory comes in. Chase invited some of us over for the 4th of July, and we were playing with sparklers in his front yard, which had a lot of ivy in it. Someone threw a sparkler up in the air, and it landed in the ivy. An eerie, green glow then emanated from the ivy, which looked really cool. I wish I had a photo of it.

Chase's parents pulled him out of public school and put him in a private school after sixth grade, so that 4th of July was one of the last times I ever saw him. Another of the last times I saw him was, quite possibly, the reason (or the last straw) why his parents pulled him out of public school:

A friend down the street from me had a sleepover party which I attended. Being a geek, Chase was not invited (all those things his parents invited us to were never reciprocated). Anyway, it was decided at some point in the party that we were going to toilet paper Chase's house. Back then, I handled late evenings much as I do now--I fell asleep early. My friends tried to wake me up to join them in the fun, but they weren't able to--I was out cold. So, they went out by themselves. They apparently made too much noise, because they awakened Chase's father, who called the cops and then ran outside and started chasing my friends. He wasn't wearing shoes and kicked and shattered a big pot in the yard, which only added to the fun. The cops showed up quickly, and decided that they wouldn't ticket my friends for vandalism or breaking curfew if they came back in the morning and cleaned up the mess. My friends agreed.

This was all recounted to me when I woke up in the morning. Even though I wasn't involved with the mayhem, I decided to go with them to clean up the Eckhardts' yard. Chase and his parents stood on the porch and supervised the operation, which was quite messy, as my friends had not only TP'ed the place, but they'd also thrown plastic confetti all over the lawn. Chase's parents looked at us, Chase's supposed friends, with a mixture of disgust and disappointment. I, in particular, got many looks of disappointment since I had been at their house more than anyone else. I hadn't been there the night before and they knew it, but my mere association with these traitors was disappointing enough for them.

I feel a bit guilty when I look back on how I hung out with Chase and accepted various invitations to his house and parties, even though I didn't think much of him and didn't want to be seen with him. I was always nice and respectful to him, though. I haven't thought about him in years, so I decided to look him up on Facebook and a few other websites. He still looks super skinny, but he's lost the oversized tortoiseshell glasses and now looks fairly normal. He's apparently a healthcare administrator, which is what his father was. Good for him.