Earlier today I mentioned the actor James Dean to a friend
during conversation. I brought up Dean’s name because he died at the age of 24
years-old. All of Dean’s work came in the last two years of his short life. The
world knows James Dean only as a young, good-looking guy. There is no “older”
James Dean with a potbelly. There exists no silly-looking police mugshot of a drunken,
middle-aged James Dean.
Anyway, after I brought up James Dean, I began thinking
about Bob MacLeod. Bob sat right next to me in Mr. Whipkey’s 9th
grade homeroom. I think Bob died when he was 14 years old, about 47 years ago.
He died in a go-cart accident while speeding around a parking lot. It was a
gruesome freak accident and I will not go into the details.
A lot of the people who were classmates of Bob then, vaguely
remember Bob today. Many of them remember an accident, but forget the victim's name. Bob was short, blond, and had
an unusually deep voice for a kid. Bob did not have a perfect skin complexion, a curse cast upon
many a 14 year-old. I can still picture the guy. I can still
hear his voice.
One Saturday evening Bob had a party at his parent’s house.
It was not a wild party, Bob’s parent’s chaperoned. I think it might have been
a birthday party. I believe he invited everyone in the class, even the girls. A
dozen or so attended. I do not remember spending a boring night in the MacLeod
basement, so the party was probably a success.
But Bob was not a perfect 14 year-old boy. Once or twice he
would get into an argument over something petty, and he would actually get
angry and raise his voice. When I was on the other side of one of these debates, I would
become uncomfortable with Bob’s intensity and back out of the discussion. When
I was witnessing the argument, I would be amused. But Bob had a sense of humor
too. He would laugh if he heard something funny, including a body noise, even one
he created.
Bob is like James Dean in that his gray-haired years never
came to pass. He will always be young. As romantic as that might sound, it is
of course a curse. I’m sure that both Bob, and James Dean, would have preferred
to live to at least 60. As a guy who has now lived beyond 60, I can attest that
living an additional 40 or 50 years is preferred to be remembered as forever
young. And besides, Bob may have eclipsed the achievements of all of his classmates and become
President. He may have even been my life-long friend. Heck, in a sense he is anyway.
