In 1996 I entered eighth grade, my last year at Sand Creek Middle School. Eighth grade would be a fun year for me, but it was filled with many conflicts. On most afternoons, my friends and I would make a routine stop at The West Albany News Center convenience store. I often had leftover lunch money and would use it to buy a Nutrageous candy bar and a Dr. Pepper. Eric would always say to me, “Geez, Luke, I never knew anybody who liked nuts as much as you do.” Eric and I started hanging out with a new kid, Dan, more often. I had known Dan since third grade. Even though Dan and Eric would spend a lot of time together, Eric had some reservations about Dan. About a year earlier, Dan and Eric got into a fight after school and Dan beat him up. Dan apologized to Eric, but Eric never really forgave him. Eric would ridicule Dan for buying a Nirvana T-shirt without ever really listening to the band’s music and for smoking cigarettes but never fully inhaling.
One reason Eric and I started to have problems in eighth grade was that Eric started smoking marijuana frequently. Eric and some of his other friends decided to attend the Halloween dance stoned. I declined their invite to smoke because I was involved in the dance’s haunted house. The haunted house took place in the school’s courtyard, and it was my duty to lie under a picnic table and trip the visitors with a rake while they walked past. When the first group of students walked past me, I was too far away from them and missed their feet, so I ran up to them and started yelling. One student grabbed the rake from me and broke it in half. That was the end of the haunted house for me.
Even when Eric and his friends were smoking up outside of school, I didn’t get involved. I was afraid to experiment with drugs because my mother threatened bodily harm if she ever found out that I had. My mother would often say, “There’s one easy way to throw your life down the toilet: smoking pot. You better never come home stoned.” I kept this promise to her, but with friends like Eric it was especially hard. The first time Eric smoked weed, which was about a week after he turned thirteen, it soon became the only thing he would talk about. I could never understand the big deal. The first time Eric got high he went to Stewart’s, a convenience store, made himself a sundae, and then threw some sprinkles over his shoulder. Even though Eric found the story hilarious, I was tired of him telling me, “Oh, you just have to try it.” Soon Eric began smoking marijuana almost every weekend, and during the week he would talk about how he was going to get high the following weekend.
Eric and I had our quarrels, but Eric and Gary started to lose contact in eighth grade. Gary and Eric had known each other since the third grade, and Eric was simply tired of hanging around him. About midway through seventh grade, Gary started to hang out with other friends. Eric and I were spending endless amounts of time together, and Eric’s new friends began to exclude Gary. Eric didn’t like hanging out with Gary anymore because he claimed that Gary was too fat, even though he had been friends with him for about five years. One time when I was hanging out with Eric and his new friends, Eric remarked, “Oh, good thing Gary isn’t here. Could he even fit into one of these seats?” Eric was becoming very mean.
One time Eric tried to convince me that all girls loved to shave themselves. I almost fell for Eric’s lie, since all we would look at was Playboy, and anybody who has read Playboy and never seen a woman’s vagina in person might come to that conclusion. Another time, when Eric and I were talking to a group of girls, one of the girls announced that her friend hadn’t yet had her period. Eric then told those girls, “Well, Luke hasn’t gotten his period yet either.” Another time our friend Al put gum in my hair as a practical joke. I couldn’t get it out and had to go to a nearby hair salon to have it removed.
Since I was upset at Eric and his other friends for teasing me, Dan and I became close that year. Dan also liked to play practical jokes, but not on me. Dan and I used to go to the shopping mall and buy fart candy and stink bombs. One time Dan set off a stink bomb in study hall. He would give the fart candy to his friends but he was careless once and left some fart candy on his kitchen table. Dan’s grandmother thought it was her pill and swallowed it. It was a practical joke gone totally wrong. Most sixty-year-old women have enough gas without the aid of fart candy, and a pill that makes people fart is the last possible thing Dan’s grandmother needed.
Dan and I also liked to prank people. Playing pranks was one of my favorite pastimes, and somehow my friends and I were clever enough to outsmart *69 and caller ID. Dan would usually pretend that he was this boy named Dwight, whom Dan hated, and would tell everybody that he was having a party at his house over the weekend. Some people weren’t fooled and knew it was Dan, while others fell for it and came up with excuses as to why they couldn’t attend. They must not have liked Dwight either.
Another practical joke Eric played on me happened the day after I appeared in the school play Guys and Dolls. The play director required that everybody
