Robert

Robert is my best friend from childhood. He may have been my only true close friend from high school.

My family moved from South Euclid, Ohio to Clinton, Mississippi during the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. Most people would consider that to be a heartbreaking time to move. I guess it was for me too, but for a different reason.

My high school in Ohio was tough and segregated into cliques. Like most high schools, there were the jocks, the bad-asses (we called them BAs), and then there were the pot heads. As I’ve written about before, I was isolated and bullied with woefully deficient social skills. The pot heads were the only natural fit. They would take anybody, so long as you were willing to get high.

So yes, I smoked marijuana through my junior year in high school. I don’t really want my kids to know this about me. So kids, don’t read this part.

The problem with pot head friends is that they don’t really care about each other. There’s no real closeness developed in the haze. My dad encouraged me to make friends in Boy Scouts, but they were all pot heads too.

So when I left the only home I ever remembered to move to Mississippi, nobody said goodbye. I never again contacted anybody from South Euclid. It was a heck of a way to realize how little I was leaving behind.

I met Robert that senior year in Mississippi. It probably was in CYO (a Catholic youth group). I immediately recognized a kindred spirit. We were both huge nerds. By this, I mean we were both very smart and socially awkward. In this sense, he was probably even more of a nerd than I.

Neither of us could put on much of a social mask. That left us at a disadvantage when talking to our peers, but it made us quick friends. We could be genuine and authentic with each other. There was no posing or posturing. There was no reputation to preserve. No topic was off limits. We could always say what was on our minds. We still can.

In Ohio I went to a high school of 2,000-3,000 students. My ACT score was pretty good but nothing unusual. But when I moved to a smaller high school in Mississippi, I suddenly had the second-highest ACT score in my class. Robert had the highest score.

Robert was a National Merit Finalist. I didn’t know what that was until Robert explained it to me. He was obsessed with it. He would get excited about meeting a girl who was a National Merit Finalists or a girl who scored a 1600 on her SAT. I truly believe he found them attractive because they were smart. OK, it helped if they were cute too.

I simply wanted to outscore him on one standardized test. I couldn’t seem to do it. In desperation I started looking for tests where I might be able to outscore him. I finally found one that I could study for, and managed to outscore him. This was definitely a case where the exception proved the rule.

In college a few of my friends took an IQ test. Robert happened to be with us, or maybe I arranged for him to be with us. When we finished, the person who got the lowest score was… Robert. As it turns out, Robert was a very deliberate worker, and he finished only about half the questions before time expired. He still scored an IQ of 118. So for years we mockingly nicknamed him “118.” It was an homage to what he could have scored had he finished the test. Sometime later he finished the test and got a perfect score.

Robert was in both of the groups where I found friends that senior year in high school. CYO was the first. This group meant so much to me that I continued with the group into my freshman year in college, even though it was a high-school group. Ultimately I turned 19 and aged out.

The other group was my high school drama department. The teacher in charge of the drama club was Mrs. Whitlock. She was also in charge of the debate club. I was on the drama side. Robert was on both the drama and debate sides. He introduced me to the debaters in the group. (Aside: They always competed for state-wide championships.)

So Robert helped me to integrate with two groups and introduced me to a third group. That’s more than I was able to accomplish on my own for 17 years in Ohio. I didn’t have to be a pothead to fit in somewhere. Not anymore.

Robert’s siblings became good friends with my siblings and I dated his sister for a brief period.

Robert even indirectly influenced how I got to know my Jamie. Claudia was part of the debate club. So she knew me, at least casually. Then she went to the same college as Jamie and became her friend.

After college, Jamie moved to Jackson (near where I was going to school in Clinton) and rented an apartment. She wanted to celebrate by throwing a house-warming party. But she didn’t know a lot of people in the area. So she asked Claudia to invite people to the party. I was one of Claudia’s invitees. It wasn’t the first time I saw Jamie (that’s a story for another day), but it was a step toward us eventually dating.

After our senior year in Clinton, we left for separate colleges. In stark contrast to the “friends” I grew up with in Ohio, Robert has become a life-long friend. You know the kind. After not seeing each other for years, we can pick things up without skipping a beat, as if our last conversation occurred the day before.

Robert decided to go to medical school (of course). He moved to California, became an ER doctor, married, divorced, married again, and had three beautiful quarter-Japanese children. He was the best man in my wedding. I was the best man in his wedding.

The Japanese connection could have had some influence over my Andrew marrying a Japanese girl. The first time I went to Japan was with Robert’s Japanese mother-in-law and members of her family including Robert his wife. It was a wonderful trip where I got to stay in the family home (rare for a foreigner). It gave me the confidence to return to Japan, which I did several times with my children. They loved it. I can navigate the Tokyo subway system with more confidence than the Atlanta subway system.

In short, it’s hard to overstate the effect Robert had in my life. I finally felt worthy of having a best friend. He opened doors for me. I know I always have somebody I can talk to, even if we don’t talk very often.

We are kindred nerd spirits.