My Best Friend is Dead

My Best Friend is Dead

I first met Chipper Gleason when I was 5 or 6, when my mother was working with Chipper's mother Sue teaching music lessons in town. The He- Man connection must have been what initially tipped our parents off that we would be good friends. I remember my mom asking me if I wanted to play with this kid who had Castle Greyskull, a large green molded castle that He- Man lived inside of with the other Masters of the Universe. The answer was, of course, "Yes!" and we met one afternoon while both my mom and Sue taught lessons at the Church.

We played that first afternoon on the sloping hill in front of the church, on the opposite side of Main Street from the library. Chipper was a small, wirey boy with bright blue eyes and light brown hair cut in a kind of bowl. Later we figured out that even though we were the same height, Chipper's skinny legs were longer than mine, and that my birthday was before his (so I was older). There was not much to play with in the common in front of the church. There were a few swings and things, but mostly we played along the rail fences that bordered the common, climbing up on them and using them as platforms for our action figures. We both had a great time that day, and before long we met every time that our moms were teaching. One day my dad asked me if I wanted to invite Chipper over to play. A book I made in school in the fall of first grade laid it all out: "I like to read at school. I don't like butterscotch. I like Chipper, my best friend."

Looking back on our relationship, my parents often wondered what exactly it was that we spent so much time talking about. Chipper was pretty shy around most adults except his mother, so they only really caught glimpses of us ...

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... toys as I wanted, which I kept carefully organized and out of the hands of my five year old brother, the terror. She even gave me the games for the Commodore 64 (which technically now belonged to Dara), to play on my own computer that I got for my tenth birthday that November.

That spring, as I sat playing Kung Fu on the computer in my parent's room, I had a revelation. I raced outside to our big, wandering back yard and started talking. I had to tell Chipper somethingÉ he had to know! I was sure that he could hear me. "Chipper," I said, half under my breath because I was afraid the neighbors would see me talking to myself and think that I was crazy, "I figured it out! I figured out how to beat the forth- floor boss in Kung Fu! All you have to do is squat and punch... it's so easy! It's so easy." Somehow, of all the things to say, that was the most important.