stream of thompsoness
My best friend in fourth grade was Burke Thompson. Burke Thompson had an orbiting personality. By that I mean he would latch on to one particular best friend and orbit him for about a year. The friend that Burke Thompson orbited would be more of a risk taker than Burke. Burke was kind of cautious and calculating, but very intelligent. Sometimes he would goad the friend that he orbited into doing something stupid. Then he would snicker when that friend got in trouble.
Before me, Burke Thompson orbited Mathew Sutcliff. Matthew Sutcliff had a little brother named Benjamin. Benjamin Sutcliff had a patch over his eye. He had a "lazy" eye, I was told and the patch was supposed to fix the lazy eye. The Sutcliff's father drove a sputtering Volkswagon of some sort. Mr. Sutcliff ran for city council one year, but I'm pretty sure he didn't win. Mr. Sutcliff had a big, bushy beard and looked like a herpatologist, hippie. The Sutcliff boys looked like kids that would be in cereal commericals in the 70s.
Anyway, I used to spend the night at the Thompson's house quite a bit when Burke was orbiting around me. My mom would pack me a paper grocery bag with my pajamas and a toothbrush in it. Mrs. Thompson used to call my paper grocery bag a Polish suitcase. ( I am in fact, partly Polish, but I don't know if Mrs. Thompson knew that.)
Mrs. Thompson was part American Indian. She had a vicious cackle, and she kind of scared me. One time Burke poured us some glasses of pepsi and left the empty ice cube trays on the kitchen counter.
"The ice won't make itself on the counter," Mrs. Thompson said in a loud and mean voice that scared me. Burke quickly filled the ice cube trays and put them in the freezer.
We used to drink our pepsi's at the Thompson's little bar they had in their family room. It was kind of fun to swivel on the bar stools and drink the pepsis. Usually we were hot and sweaty from playing outside. Then when the glass was empty I would drink that last watery bit of pepsi and crunch on the ice. The Thompson's used to play Neil Diamond records and smoke cigarettes. This was kind of strange to me because no one in my family smoked.
Mr. Thompson kind of scared me too. Not because he was mean, but because he was ugly. He was so ugly that I figured he had to be mean. But I barely remember him saying anything at all.
I do remember that Mr. Thompson lost his job managing a hotel. When Mr. Thompson lost his job, Mrs. Thompson got a job in a little gift shop. The Thompson's only had one car, so Mrs. Thompson had to ride her bicycle across town to work at the gift shop.
Burke Thompson had an older sister named Amy. She was about two years older than us and I thought she was kind of pretty. Burke told me that when Amy got a C in math on her report card she had to spend an hour each night working on the Mr. Professor. Mr. Professor was a little hand held math game that made you solve math problems.
One time I walked into the Thompson's bathroom and found that the toilet still had pee and toilet paper in it.
"Amy probably did that," Burke said. "She never flushes the toilet." I remember there were contact lens cases and cat hair in the Thompson's bathroom and one of those fans in the ceiling that buzzed on everytime you switched on the light. All of this was kind of strange and interesting to me.
Burke Thompson kept his room very neat. He had a bunk bed and a gerbil in a glass tank. He also had a metal detector, and he showed me this brass bell that he found in an overgrown lot.
Burke and I used to stay up really late in his room when I was staying the night with my Polish suitcase. At least, it seemed really late. It might have only been 10 or 11pm. As it got later and later we would get sleepy and our conversations would get stranger. Neither one of us would want to fall asleep first, so we would keep talking about whatever.
One time one of us said,
"Did you know that the light from the stars you're seeing first left the star when George Washington was still alive?"
This was something one of us saw on public television. This became a running joke we would say when it was really late and we were lying on the bunkbeds trying not to go to sleep.
The Thompsons also had a basketball hoop and a ping-pong table. When I think of the Thompson's ping-pong table I think of Robin Williams and cocaine. I'm not sure why.
Anyway, the hotel that Mr. Thompson lost his job from became a nursing home for people with Alzheimer's. Mr. Thompson didn't work there, but that's just what it became. Amy Thompson went to college in Texas, I think, or got a job with Texas insturments.
After me, Burke Thompson orbited John Rocks. John Rock's mom was an obese florist. John Rock's dad was supposedly an engineer. John Rocks had the pool that I fell into and got the fungus from. Its the fungus that I have carried for twenty years and have given to many girlfriends, including the one that was making a concerted bid to be an actress after years of stripping at Mons Venus.
The Rocks' house was always dark and covered in oily dog hair. The Rocks' house actually had giant brown rocks on the outside of it. The Rocks' phone number was only one digit off from that song by Tommy Two-Tone, that went "eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nigh-ee-ine!" The Rocks' number was 867-5409. Their phone rang constantly day and night while that song was on the charts, even though it was it was one digit off from the song. (The Rocks may very well have the same number today. Try it if you like, the area code is 727)
John Rocks had a waterbed and a Police poster on his wall. He also had his own airconditioner, which I thought was pretty neat.
I remember me and John Rocks ordered the Eagle's greatest hits, Volume I and II out of a magazine one summer. He got volume 1 and I got volume two. I thought volume two was obviously better because it had Hotel California on it. I remember imagining a video I would make for Hotel California that inlvolved a corvette driving along a dark desert highway at dusk. I was just getting into my dream of being a movie director back then. I really wanted to be the next Steven Spielberg.
One day John Rocks told me something about the Thompsons. He said that Mrs. Thompson has cracked on my entire family one time. She called my mom a ditz or an airhead or something. Mrs. Thompson said that I was weird. She said that my dad was really quiet. (That didn't really seem like much of a crack, but whatever).
"What did she say about my sister, Laura?" I asked John.
"I don't think she said anything about Laura," John said.
I told my mom how John Rocks said that Mrs. Thompson cracked on our entire family. This made my mom mad and then she said some things that she thought about the Thompson family. My mom said something about Mrs. Thompson riding a bicycle across town to work at a gift shop for minimum wage.
9:02:37 PM 
|
