LJ Idol, Week 10
I’d be tempted to say something like “Everyone has a friend like this…,” but the fact is, I don’t know if that’s true. There are few, if any, other people like Troy in this world, and that may or may not be a really good thing.
I can’t speak for who he is now as a person, as we’ve grown far apart in recent years, but the Troy that I knew in the prime of my teenage years is forever ingrained in my mind as the careless juggernaut that every teenage boy wishes they had as a friend. While myself and my other friends were meek nerds who knew how to have a lengthy conversation about the Death Star, Troy was on the football team, claimed to know what beer tasted like and had even (supposedly) made out with a girl. The fact that we could not only call him our friend, but that he would call us his best friends was just as fantastic as it was unlikely.
The friendship between Troy and I, in particular, was the most interesting amongst our friends. Not because I was any nerdier than the rest of them, but because we spent the most time together. We only lived a half mile away from each other, and in the rural countryside that pretty much made us next door neighbors. Plus, my father and his mother worked together, providing the ability to easily get together whenever we wanted.
More than that, though…or perhaps because of that, I had access to the wild and random world of Troy that my friends often lacked. It was more likely that our friends would come to me and ask about what we had been up to rather than to ask Troy himself, because they knew that it probably involved Troy doing something ridiculous and I had become an expert on translating that ridiculousness into a hilarious story.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I was never making fun of him. Troy, himself, loved hearing these stories. It was almost like he was reveling in his own wacky adventures.
So, then, let’s talk about Troy’s antics. He was the kind of guy who seemed to be able to look at any situation or environment, and then instantly come up with some sort of nonsensical plan to exploit it. Example: We’re walking down an old logging road in the woods behind my house when we find an old woodshed, along with a rope hanging from a nearby tree. Before I can even fully process the thought of “I wonder what that rope is for,” Troy had already come up with an idea.
“Okay, I’m going to climb the rope, swing, and then jump on top of the shed.”
“Are you sure? It looks like a pretty old rope. That shed doesn’t look too sturdy either.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. This is going to be awesome.”
He proceeds to climb the rope, which surprisingly holds, and he does manage to get it swinging. Finally, he makes a strange jumping motion off of the moving rope. I could just imagine how it looked in his mind: Indiana Jones swinging on a rope and then artfully leaping off before rolling onto the shed’s roof. Instead, he collides with the corner of the structure, where the wall meets the roof, much harder than he anticipates. Despite the fact that the wind has probably been knocked out of him, he tries to cling onto the roof, but to no avail. He collapses onto the ground on his back with a dramatic “Oof.”
I rush over to him.
“Hey, are you okay, man?” I’m expecting for him to cry in pain or to let me know of how bad his back hurts. Instead, he laughs.
“Man, that was awesome!”
There are just too many examples of this. Too many stories. It would’ve been reason enough to just follow him around all the time if I knew he was going to do things like this. The fact that he truly was such a great friend was icing on the cake.
Almost as plentiful as his actual exploits were the ones that he had talked about doing someday, but had not actually done. To this day, my family and friends still come close to crying with laughter over Troy’s Flaming Coffee Can Stunt, an event that (thankfully, probably) never occurred.
“So,” he says, showing me a diagram he drew, “I figure you and I will build some ramps, right?”
“How big?” I ask.
“Big enough that I can get some good air with my bike.” He is, of course, referring to his bicycle - not a motorcycle. His bike was, occasionally, one of his favorite possessions.
“Okay,” I said, not sure if he or I had the required engineering skills to build whatever ramp he was dreaming about.
“So, we’re going to get some coffee cans, right? And I figure we’ll fill them up with some gasoline and then set them on fire. Then I’ll jump them with my bike.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I confessed.
“No, no, it’s going to be alright. But,” he added, completely serious, “I’m going to need you to hold onto a bucket of water. You know…just in case.”
It was the “just in case” that became the punchline to that story. To know Troy was to know that whatever plan he had was probably going to result in needing that “just in case” precautionary measure.
Still, however, it was one of the most simple of his bad ideas that became the all-time favorite story amongst my friends. I assumed it was because of just how simple and hilarious it was, like a simple Three Stooges sketch that was just perfectly executed.
We were, again, walking behind my house one day. There was a hunting cabin not far from my house, converted from what had once been a house from the early 1900s that had burnt to the ground. In the summer there was little, if any, traffic back there, and it often became our place to hang out at while looking for things to do.
Troy found a stick, a rather large stick. For reasons that I still don’t completely understand, he felt that he needed to break it. Perhaps it was just a random desire to break something and that large stick was the best option he could muster in the moment.
Now, one detail that I don’t think he considered, though I had, was that most of the trees surrounding the cabin were oak trees. This large stick was, therefore, likely oak and, therefore, unlikely to break by whatever means he was going to come up with.
So how was he going to break this stick? He was going to smash it against a large stone on the ground. He stood before the stone, lifted the stick with both hands above his head and then brought the stick down on the rock. Nothing. The stick bounced off the rock and made some noise, but otherwise there was no damage to report on the stick. Still convinced this was the way to go, he tried it again. Nothing.
“One more time,” he said. He lifted the stick above his head again and with a look of absolute fury, he brought it down on the stone. It bounced off the rock again, causing no damage, but with a much greater force this time. The stick bounced right up into his forehead.
It was almost like watching comedy in slow motion: the stick slowly coming down, bouncing off of the stone, and then slowly moving towards his own head. The look on his face was one of “Well, this was a bad idea.” Then, the stick made contact with his head, hard. His legs were in the air now. His entire body, in fact, was airborne. He was falling backwards. He was on his back. The stick, still unbroken, was lying beside him.
“Are…are you okay?” I asked?
“Stupid stick,” he said. “Hey, check out those old glass bottles over there!”