Imagine My Surprise

I've always been a shy, introspective sort. I had a hard time making friends as a kid, so I resorted to devising imaginary friends. Fortunately, I was quite imaginative and was able to construct entirely believable fictional characters with whom to while away recesses.

My best friend was Toby. Toby was everything you might want in a friend: generous, helpful, and just a fun guy to be around in general. He was athletic but he didn't rub your face in it, and he was a good student but not a brown noser. He was smart enough to stay out of trouble but mischievous enough to engage in the occasional prank. He was, as far as I could imagine, the best possible friend.

Things were going well with me and Toby. Too well, in fact.

As I mentioned, I was an introspective and creative child. I was the kind of kid who could never just let things be. I drove my teachers insane with my incessant questions. I was always asking "why?"

It was not surprising, then, that I soon started to wonder why Toby was hanging around with me. Surely a kid like Toby had his pick of friends. Why me? I was unathletic, shy, unpopular and frankly a little odd. What did Toby see in me?

Soon flaws began to appear in Toby's character. I came to suspect that he spent time with me primarily out of some sense of obligation. This became clear to me over dinner one night at Toby's house. Toby's family was very wealthy, occupying a vast hidden mansion in the woods behind my family's modest ranch house. I often went over there for dinner, because his mom made fantastic lasagna and they had a trampoline.

Toby's dad was a minister and was always talking about helping "the less fortunate." He let something slip that night that about how proud he was of Toby for "doing his part." He quickly changed the subject, but it was clear that he was talking about me. I was "the less fortunate." Not because I was poor or handicapped or something, but because I was me.

After that, things were different between me and Toby. The spell had been broken. Toby started hanging out with the more popular kids. He played basketball with them during recess. He would always ask me if I wanted to play, but he knew I would say no. I'd rather be alone than embarrass myself on the basketball court.

Then Toby got a girlfriend. Her name was Angela, and she was the most popular girl in school. They were too young to date, per se, but they spent as much time they could together. Toby was alway mysteriously "out" when I called. Eventually I stopped calling.

Toby got Angela pregnant during freshman year of high school. They moved to Alaska, where Toby's uncle got him a job gutting fish. I heard that Angela divorced him eight months after the baby was born. She and their daughter moved in with her parents in Michigan.

Toby called me three weeks ago. He said he was in Sacramento, and asked if I wanted to meet him. I drove up there and met him at Denny's. He had a beer gut and was losing his hair. He said he was working odd jobs, trying to get up enough money to start a landscaping business, but it was hard because his rent was so high. It turned out he had been living at a Motel 6 for three months.

I told him I had a finished room in my barn he could stay in if he wanted to. I had been thinking of putting in a bathroom, and asked if he wanted to help out with the project in exchange for room and board. He protested that he couldn't possibly impose on me, but not very convincingly. We swung by the motel, picked up his meager belongings, and headed back to Ripon.

Toby lives in my barn. He's a loser now, like me.



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