“The Pink Shoelaces”
By Chad Smith
I
was about sixteen years old at the time, maybe fifteen. You know what it’s like
to be that age: you’re confused, you’ve got a lot of energy and you really
don’t know where to focus it. But I managed; we all do, right?
It
was my junior year of high school and I had abandoned my old friends – they
were too busy doing drugs. Not for me. I remember I started to dress
differently. I always loved art and was creative, but my taste for clothes up
until that point had been pretty generic. At fifteen – sixteen? – though, I
threw myself headlong into painting, the arts and skateboarding, and it was all
reflected in the clothes I wore. I’d draw on my jeans with paint marker or I’d
throw on old, random T-shirts and wear silver rings. I didn’t stand out
desperately, but I got noticed.
One
weekend around this time, I bought a pair of Adidas: navy ones with white
signature stripes on the side. I bought them because I wanted to paint the
three Adidas signature stripes different colors. White was too boring. I
remember right after having bought the sneakers, I headed back to my house,
took out my paint markers and colored the three stripes orange, yellow and red,
respectively.
But
something still was missing.
The
shoes, though livelier, still didn’t look the way I had envisioned. It was the
shoelaces. The ones the shoes came with just didn’t fit the look. So I replaced
them the next day. The color I decided on, pink, was kind of unusual. I liked
it, though. I could care less if anyone thought it was weird or feminine or
whatever – I liked these laces.
Anyway,
wearing these Adidas with the pink laces in science class the next day, I sat
there, bored, waiting for the teacher to arrive.
In this particular
class, which was Marine Biology, we students didn’t have individual seats.
Because most of the work in the course was done with a partner, we sat at desks
made for just two people. The person who happened to be sitting next to you,
then, by default, was your partner in all the assignments.
My
partner that year was Jason Butler. Jason, a senior, was a friendly,
charismatic kid. He was the type of kid everyone knew and wanted to be friends
with.
When I was a
freshman, I once saw Jason at a house party. Unsurprisingly, at this party he
didn’t just mingle like everyone else. Instead, he walked into the master
bedroom of the house and decided to jump from its window into a pool two
stories below. As he stood there on the ledge, a few people sitting around the
pool taunted him, “You won’t do it! You won’t do it!” A moment later, though,
those same people were soaked by the giant splash.
But
I digress. Back to the science class. Before I had arrived there that day, some
of my old friends had been giving me shit about my pink shoelaces, calling me
“twinkle-toes” or whatever. One of my old friends even said I was wearing
“Barbie boots.” I could’ve cared less, though. Yeah, but at least I’m somewhat original, I had thought. No, their
comments hadn’t bothered me at all – until, that was, I got to class.
There,
it started to gnaw at me: Who did these
kids think they were? They haven’t said anything to me for months, and now they
only speak to me when it’s to make fun of me?
I started to get
angry. I started thinking about all the times I had done them favors or
revealed something personal or simply been a good friend. I felt betrayed.
When
the teacher finally did arrive, he told us to take out our lab equipment. But I
was really in no mood to do work after the encounter I had just had. I remember
wondering where Jason was. After a couple minutes, though, he finally walked
in. He was late and, characteristically, he was cool about it. He walked in
with his good friend, Bobby. Funny enough, while the two were taking their
seats, they were still flirting with some girls in the hallway, gesturing at
them through the window of the class door. After an exasperated look from the
teacher, though, they stopped.
“What
do we have to do today?” J.B. asked me. That was his nickname, J.B. “I don’t
know,” I told him, “study some fish bones, I guess.” I pointed to the
assignment. He turned to me and smiled, “I’m not doing jack. I’m actually gonna
try and sneak out of here once everyone gets settled.” I just looked at him and
snickered, “Don’t get caught.”
However,
J.B. didn’t sneak out of class that day. Actually, he sat there the entire
period and did his work. At some point – I think it was after he finished the
task and was just leaning back in his chair – he noticed my sneakers.
“Nice
shoelaces,” he said. I looked over at him and thought he was joking. But there
was no sarcasm there. “Are you serious?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said, “they’re
different...I like them.”
I thanked him and went back to my work.
But I took Jason’s comments to heart. He made me feel – with that brief
statement – that I was doing something right. He made me feel as if I were on
the right track. It no longer mattered what my old friends had said to me: I
was coming into my own – with or without them.
* * *
Junior
year of high school came to a close in early June. Summer came and went, and in
September I began my first week back at high school as a senior. What a
milestone, right?
One
afternoon, after having left my English class to go to math, I noticed a
commotion at the end of the hallway. Two girls were crying, and many students were
staring at them. Leigh, one of the girls crying, looked in bad shape: her face
was a deep red and her eyes were closed tightly, but tears were still escaping,
even falling off her face. Something
was desperately wrong.
Jason
was in the E.R; there had been an accident. He and a friend were near our
town’s community college, which they had recently begun. Jason had stepped out
of the car to cross the street and get a pack of cigarettes, but instead of
making it there, a semi-trailer truck slammed into him. The driver attempted to
brake, but it made little difference. Leigh was one of J.B.’s good friends, and
she had just come from seeing him in the hospital. She said he didn’t even look
like himself: the swelling was too severe. Later that day, we heard he was
brain dead.
Jason’s
parents, now, were faced with a horrible decision – when to take him off life
support.
I
couldn’t believe what was going on. This was it. J.B. wasn’t going to laugh
about the whole situation another day. He wasn’t going to recount what had
happened in any anecdote about how he had almost
gotten hit by a truck. This was it.
The
next day at school, in every corridor, around every turn, there were hushed
voices or simply there was silence. Such quiet in the normally bustling halls
said a lot about the gravity of the situation. It was as though everyone knew
what everyone else was thinking, but no one knew how to make sense of it.
And
then we found out: Jason’s parents took him off life support that morning.
* * *
I
didn’t go to the funeral, but I wish I had. Although I was never that close to
J.B., I wish I could’ve gone and said goodbye to the kid who made me feel a
little stronger during a vulnerable time. It was crazy, after the funeral I
heard of a few tiffs between groups of students, arguing about who had more of
a “right” to be upset and who didn’t have any “right” at all. People were
already saying that some underclassman saw the ceremony more like a social
event. I don’t think that’s true. People were upset and were just looking for
someone or something to blame.
It’s
weird to think back to that time, you know? It’s weird to think I had been
friendly with J.B. during his final year. I’d like to think that his spirit
lives on, but who really knows. One thing’s for certain, though: Jason, and
what he said to me that day in Marine Biology, left me with an impression that
will be with me for a long time – forever maybe.
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