There's Plenty of Rage to go Around.

Darryl never had trouble sounding his voice as the prominent leader of the pack. None of us really had a problem with this though, as it was never really contested amongst the four of us. He just had this natural aura of authority around him, which I'm pretty sure was mostly due to his ability to create these almost instantaneous outbursts of pure pissed-offedness in any given scenario.

You know how you hear those stories about some 76 year old woman from Peoria that bottle-fed a rottweiler pup, named it Muffin, and lovingly hand-raised it for 8 years. Then one day during the break between Wheel and Jeopardy, the woman is returning from retrieving the second half of that ham sandwich from the kitchen - and just before she can comfortably resituate herself in her faux-suede recliner, a snarling and adrenaline-rushed Muffin decides to maul off over sixty percent of her face? Well, Darryl was kinda like that.

Everyone knows what a spork is - those pink, shrink-wrapped, plastic spoon things from the cafeteria with the tines on the end. There was always a random number imprinted on the back of the handle that, much like many other fortune-telling devices available in 7th grade, supposedly predicted a variety of outcomes like the age when you were going to die, or how many times you were going to get laid. One time, Darryl stabbed some kid in the back of the neck with one. The kid had to be escorted to the nurses office with the thing still sticking out of the back of his head.

I never knew what the kid did to set Darryl off - maybe I didn't want to know. The one thing we all did know was that you didn't fuck with Darryl, 'cuz Darryl would fuck you up.

Back in those days there was alot of talk about this new game called Mortal Kombat. All the parents and politicians kept saying it was responsible for shit like those high school shootings and teen pregnancy and HIV and the holocaust. I'm still not fully convinced, but what I do know is that it acted as the perfect medium to introduce me to one of my best of friends.

I never had a Nintendo or Sega Genesis or anything like that growing up, but that didn't stop me from getting my video game fix. Every time I was dragged to a department store, I'd make a beeline for the electronics department in high hopes that whatever video game system demo currently on display wasn't already being used by some other asshole that would inevitably deprive my only opportunity to enjoy fifteen minutes of uninterrupted gameplay of Super Mario World.

One day in band class, in the excitement of a new found video game interest, I blurted something out about the badassery of Mortal Kombat 2 (even though I had only played it for about 8 minutes at the local bowling alley the previous weekend). To my discovery, I found out that Darryl was actually this insanely huge video game addict. Almost immediately after my comment, he started boasting all this shit about how he could completely kick my ass in Mortal Kombat 2, and to prove it he rattled off half a dozen or so of the button input commands for some of the character 'finishing moves', describing the gruesome and gory details of each fatality in the process. My personal favorite was the one where the chick ripped her mask off revealing her disfigured fang-infested mouth, and then proceeded to eat (well, it was more like inhale) her helpless opponent and then regurgitate his or her skeletal remains back onto the battlefield.

That following Saturday, I had my mom drop me off at his house for the first time. It was then that I learned two things - I learned that I completely sucked at Mortal Kombat, and I also learned that when he wasn't stabbing other classmates with disposable utensils, Darryl was actually a really cool kid.

Thanks for the Mental Picture

I dedicate this blog to my best of childhood friends - Brian, Darryl, and Christopher - who have managed to imprint themselves into this massive collection of incredible memories and experiences - from the genuinely heartfelt to the strangely hilarious and exceedingly retarded - I still look back and wonder how the hell we've grown up enough to have the privilege to participate in society as fully-functioning adults... for the most part.

While our childhood is behind us, the friendships that were forged and the lessons learned are sure to last for years and years to come... or at least until one of us gets arrested... clearly that person wasn't paying quite enough attention to those lessons the first time around.

I love you assholes.

-Ben