There’s an old movie Stand By Me which is really about a writer using himself as the main character to tell the essential “coming-of-age” story. The line from that film that always stuck with me was “You will never make friends again like the ones you had when you were twelve.” I saw that movie in a theatre when it was released in the summer of 1986. I also happened to see it with one of those “twelve” friends.

By this time, “Barry” (not his real name) and I were past the “twelve” phase; out of high-school and on our way to whatever wonders post-college adulthood held. Barry was already on his way to being an accountant; my journey was much less proscribed. I was more like the “Plinko” chip on The Price is Right. My finally settling on a major was a microcosm of college itself; just another set of pegs off which I bounced.

To say Barry and I were a strange pairing as friends is the definition of “understatement.”

His upbringing came in a family just this side of Ward and June Cleaver. The guy never knew what a change-of-address card was until he moved away to college. Meanwhile, I was with a single mother on an 0-2 count on marriages and a half-brother who obviously did not have the same father as me. When you come from divorced parents who want to use their kid as the rope in a custody tug-of-war and one of those parents is in the military, you move around a lot.

That explains why I never went to the same school two years in a row until I was in the 8^th grade. Spending every day of your life as “the new kid in school” means you’ve already bounced off more “Plinko” pegs than any other kid…and a shitload of adults.

Another reason I had a “Galapagos tortoise” hard shell was the fact that in a single-parent home, the older sibling often is defaulted into the “care-giver” role to the younger ones. “Day” care was aptly named because then it only existed in the daytime, so when that single mother was a nurse who worked the oddest of hours, before my teens I became an expert at the care of a toddler.

That’s how we get to today’s theme; Barry and I are seriously different guys. But bridging from the theme to the song requires a trip to our junior high school days; it was one of those days damn near fifty years ago.

My friendship with Barry “Plinkos” off three of those schools…one year in grade school, most of junior high, and finally high school. But this story sticks to the aforementioned “friends when you were twelve” thing. While I’ve known Barry since we both had to hold a soda bottle with two hands, because I got tossed into adulthood at age nine, the years between the 3^rd grade and the 7^th grade were the proverbial “dog years.”

In the 3^rd grade, Barry and I lived across a small park from each other. We were typical kids. But after I Plinkoed around the west coast for a while. Barry and I were re-united in junior high. After another divorce and resultant custody quagmire, fate lands me in a seat in a science class right next to Barry. Of course, he still lives in the same house. Needless to say, the friendship picks right back up. In no time we’re typical kids doing typical kid shit…but there was one difference.

I had no idea why.

We still lived by that same small park. We were in the same science class in the same school. But those “dog years” had us in different worlds. But counter to what you might think, that difference only re-enforced that whole “twelve” thing. Subdivisions brought me to a revelation..

The video dramatizes the point, but the words are really what drives this song’s connection. For most, high school is when the impact of social stratification begins to take on it’s adult form. That’s why “twelve” is so important; it’s the last time friendships aren’t affected by the gravitational pull of our homogenous nature as human beings.

That’s the contrast in play here. Stand By Me is all about kids who are friends because they live in the same neighborhood. Subdivisions is all about when that changes. That matters here because I’m convinced “Barry” and I wouldn’t have been friends had we met in high school.

How we develop friendships isn’t the only thing skewed by the drudgery of adulthood. Childhood memories suffer the same fate; that’s the raison d’être behind our collective love of nostalgia…and by extension this very series. But one memory that stays crystal-clear is the day I had the Subdivisions epiphany.

From outward appearances, “Barry” and I seemed like two kids walking to school. But the journey to that walk was very different. For me, the first step was getting that younger half-brother out of bed because the single mother is already at work. Then came getting a questionably cooperative 4-year old fed and dressed and delivered to the woman in the neighborhood who ran a daycare in her home. From there it was across the aforementioned small park to Barry’s house.

The threshold on “Barry’s” door was where the worlds completely changed. For openers, the side door at his house was never locked. That’s the “small town in the midwest” flair. My time in California et al. taught me to keep everything locked, something wedged under the doorknob…and a .357 revolver under my bed for all the times it would be just me and the little brother home alone at night.

I would always knock on that door, despite being told countless times I could just come in. That just wasn’t in my nature now. Too many of my friends in California also had surprises under their beds for people who walked though doors unannounced.

An open window meant you didn’t need to open that door to know breakfast was on the stove. As I round the corner, I’m greeted by the sight of “Barry” having a screaming tirade at his mother because she didn’t make his toast to his liking. Later, as we were walking, I’m looked at this guy and wondered how the hell we can be friends given how completely different our worlds are. I’m making breakfast for a 4-year old, and he’s treating his mother like a Waffle House counter slave.

While I’m wondering that, Subdivisions is coming out of my Walkman.

You need not be a card-carrying Rush-o-phile to understand Subdivisions. Whether they admit it or not (remember… Rush are the kings of “Nerd Rock”), this song has a universal connection across anybody who found themselves in those school hallways across English and French speaking North America at this time.

No matter where you are between Barry and me on the “coming-of-age” range, those hallways are where the change-in-life transitional moments start happening. The key lies in our aforementioned homogenous nature.

Subdivisions plies the waters of being a misfit in a world which revolves around social interaction. Nobody wants to be an outcast, but high school halls have a worse fate; one that bobs to the surface when the “misfit” tries to become the “all-fit.” This runs completely counter to our social nature, but sometimes its worse to be welcome everywhere than welcome nowhere.

At least there’s honesty in rejection.

Thanks to my premature “Plinko-ing” into quasi-adulthood and the “hard shell” it had already made for me, I had already figured out how to disregard those who didn’t like me even though they really didn’t know me. That meant I was not available to be addicted to the ultimate opioid for the human brain…acceptance. But it also meant I could see what happened to those who sell their souls just to be part of a group.

It is our nature to believe it’s better to be able to go anywhere you want and to be welcome there. But the reality is sometimes it’s better having doors closed to you; sometimes it’s better to sit comfortably alone in the hallway rather than to stand in a packed room where nobody really cares. In the same way, there’s security in not having options. No choices means nothing changes. Conversely, having every option available replaces that security with the ever-present temptation to sell out one’s own soul for that ultimate opiod.

The epiphany hit me later that when again, my cassette hit the last few verses of that song.

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights

Subdivisions

In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions

In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Granted, that comes off a bit bleak, but guess what? Life isn’t all about sunshine and lollipops. If we don’t see eye-to-eye on that, then we likely also don’t agree you can never be too young to understand the power of positive skepticism. Sun Tzu said he who defends everything defends nothing. My twist on that is he who accepts everything gains nothing. Believe it or not, there’s the answer to how I could be friends with Barry. It was all about not worrying about the differences, but accepting the common ground for what it was. We both loved sports…and that was good enough.

Don’t worry…the irony isn’t lost about a song with “divisions” in the title being a reminder for me about getting rid of them.

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You can see all the Misty Water-Color Memories here.

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