Tobias and the Wreck of '82

When Tobias saw my cousin Jessica, it was love at first sight. We immediately began devising a plan that would lead her to fall in love with him. My aunt, uncle and cousins were only in town for a day and would be leaving later that evening, so our time was precious. Luckily I had just finished building my go-cart and had yet to take it on a test drive.

Tobias Caton was my best friend for the first thirteen years of my life. He lived next door and was a year older than me. He was my mentor and partner-in-crime, a fountain of knowledge about funny-cars, world-events, congenital diseases, and sex. I was in awe of him. To a boy of seven, an eight year old is a man-of-the-world.

Tobias had taught himself to read at an early age and knew how to properly pronounce polysyllabic words that most people would not encounter outside of standardized tests. We would spend hours reading his older step-brother’s copies of National Lampoon, rolling with laughter at jokes we didn’t comprehend. We listened to my mother’s George Carlin records and memorized every bit. When I got my first tape recorder we began re-enacting these monologues along with our own flatulence-inspired comedy scenes.

We had a love for dogs and one summer we took it upon ourselves to become the neighborhood “dog patrol”, whose responsibility it was to return stray dogs to their rightful owners. We didn’t come across many stray dogs. Instead, we would coax a dog off its property, walk it around the block in our “paddywagon” (an old RadioFlyer wagon with “Dog Patrol” painted on the side, like some bad Little Rascals contraption), and then bring it back to the owner with an elaborate tale of how we had found it wandering several neighborhoods over, famished and dazed, and how we had nursed it back to health on the walk home. We explained that we weren’t after a reward, though we wouldn’t turn one down, we were just doing our civic duty.

We were also amateur stuntmen, tooling around on our Huffy bikes performing feats of derring-do. When my father would burn leaves in late October, we would set up a makeshift ramp, made with a two-by-four and a cinder block, and jump the flames like dilettante Evel Knievels. Once, after Tobias had returned from a drag racing show with his family, we decided to outfit my bike with a parachute brake, fashioned out of several Glad trash bags. I sped my bike down the hill as fast as I could pedal. Tobias waited at the foot of the hill to greet me. When I got within 20 feet of him I threw the chute out, which ripped free of the twine that fastened it to the seat of my bike and blew away. I stomped on the pedals to slow my momentum, but it was too late and the bike and I plowed into Tobias, the three of us skidding into a tangled mess of limbs, handle bars, and snapped bike chain pieces.

Another of our endeavors was our “fire department”. Tobias’ father was a volunteer firefighter and we were determined to follow in his footsteps. We watched episodes of Emergency! every week, and would sit listening to a scanner that his father had gotten him as a Christmas present one year. We learned the codes for different situations and imagined we were answering the calls. We eagerly waited until there was a call in our direct vicinity, so we could hop on our bikes and go help out. We only went to one scene: a car accident several blocks away. That effectively turned me off from pursuing a career in the rescue field. From where we sat, watching on our bikes, we could see a man’s body sprawled on the hood of his car, limp and bloodied, and the hole in the windshield which he had apparently flown through. Tobias was intrigued and began reading gory EMT manuals and books on first aid. I, on the other hand, went back to rehashing George Carlin routines on my tape recorder.

Tobias and I would spend summer nights camping out in a ratty, orange pup tent in his parents’ back yard. We would sometimes camp in my yard, but his was more preferable because his house had an outdoor electrical outlet. We would run an extension cord from the outlet to our tent so we could hook up his clock radio/cassette player. We’d spend the night listening to Air Supply, dreamily fantasizing about the girls we had crushes on, and talk about our plans to marry them by summer’s end.

If any word could be used to describe Tobias in those days it was “lovelorn”. Alas, Tobias was slightly overweight. In fact, he wasn’t overweight at all he was just built large. But children have no concept of varying body types, so he inevitably became the token “fat kid”. And this hindered his wooing of the ladies.

Not that either of us did much wooing. To this day I don’t woo very well and have the gumption to leave that stuff to the masters. But Tobias was a bit more adventuresome than I, and would often confront the object of his affection, only to find his love unrequited.

But Tobias’ spirits were never dampened by these obstacles, and we continued to imagine ourselves as the pre-pubescent Casanovas we knew we were. When I would finally get up the nerve to speak to a girl I adored, he would help me look up her phone number so we could make prank calls to her house. Somehow we believed that calling a girl and pretending to be a cut-rate burial service was a surefire way to win her heart.

One day my mother’s sister came to visit with her husband and three daughters. Tobias and I had been in the woods behind his house putting the finishing touches on a go-cart we were building. It was simply three pieces of wood, with the tires from our “fire engine” nailed to the corners. We were about to take it on its maiden voyage when we learned of my cousins’ arrival.

Tobias accompanied me to my house to greet them and when he laid eyes on my older cousin Jessica, a stunning nine-year-old beauty, he was smitten. We decided to use the test run of our go-cart as a way to swindle Jessica into falling head over heels for him. Exploiting our respective talents (Tobias’ knowledge of rescue techniques and first aid and my being completely accident-prone) we set out.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity: I would make my go-cart’s first run down the hill, as my family watched, captivated. At the end of the run I would hit a bump in the ground and flip the cart over on top of me, becoming trapped under it, and fake unconsciousness. Tobias would rush to my rescue, pull my body from the wreckage before it had a chance to blow up (we knew from television that anything that crashed inevitably blew up, regardless of the fact that the go-cart had no motor), and bring me back from the brink of death. After saving the life of her cousin, how could Jessica NOT fall in love with Tobias.

We told my sister and cousins about the test run then set about making the preparations. To our extreme joy it had started to drizzle. A wet road would make the crash even more believable! Tobias picked a flower from his mother’s flowerbed to give Jessica after he had saved me and put it in the pocket of his rain slicker.

We gathered everyone at the top of the hill. They were all completely disinterested in this endeavor, but since the cake that the girls were making in my sister’s Easy Bake toy oven still had awhile to cook they decided to watch. Tobias briefed them on the dangers inherent in a mission of this magnitude and I boarded the go-cart.

Tobias made the countdown then pushed me down the hill. For such a shoddily built vehicle it was picking up speed rather quickly. The wheels wobbled on their masonry nail axles and the wind ripped through my hair. The designated crash spot rapidly approached. I tried to figure out how I should maneuver myself for the impact of the crash so I would sustain only minor injuries. Should I fall on my right or left side? As I was contemplating this one of the front tires broke free and spun off onto the side of the road. The wooden running board of the go-cart dug into the street and ground to a halt. My body was thrust forward and I had flashes of the man who flew through his windshield. I curled my body and took the brunt of the impact with my right shoulder. I tumbled down the street a few feet, my hair filling with pebbles and dirt, then rolled over on my back and waited for Tobias to come running.

Minutes passed and no one came. My neck was sore, but I lifted my head to look up the street. I saw Tobias slowly ambling down towards me, his face glum. There was no one at the top of the hill watching. No one yelling for my rescue. When Tobias got closer I noticed he was about to cry.

“They went back inside,” he said as he approached.

“Why?” I said.

“It’s raining.”

It had indeed begun to rain harder, the drops washing the blood from my scraped elbows.

“So what?” I said. “I could’ve died!”

Tobias was fumbling with the flower he had picked earlier. I watched as he twirled it between his fingers.

“I guess you won’t need that now,” I said.

“I already gave it to her,” he said. “She gave it back.” He began to cry. Apparently Tobias had prematurely given her the flower after pushing me down the hill. Jessica was taken aback, refused the flower, and the girls retreated into my parents’ house.

We gathered up what was left of the go-cart and wheeled it back up the hill for repairs. I tried to comfort Tobias and think of new ways we could interest my cousin. He said to just leave it and move on.

Tobias and I drifted apart over the years, he becoming more involved with the volunteer fire department and me focusing my energies on making videos and comic books with other friends. One afternoon in ninth grade I was filming an action short with my brother in the woods behind Tobias’ house. I noticed a tattered old rain slicker in a pile of leaves at the base of our old tree fort. It was the slicker Tobias was wearing the day of the test drive. It sounds completely unbelievable, I know, but I swear I reached into the pocket and found the dried-up dead flower he had picked for my cousin so many years before.