His home was across a small field from mine when both of us
were quite young. He is one of my
earliest friends that I can remember.
Two events connected me to him in those very early days. First, his family had suffered a tragedy and
I was there the day part of it happened.
Only five or six years old, I remember standing outside of his home
crying because of the sadness within.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but I felt it. Around the same time, I don’t remember if it
was before or after his family's tragedy, my two-year old brother passed
away during the night. My sister and I
watched from the front door as my mother, who had just found her lifeless son,
run barefoot across the snowy field to my friend’s home to use their phone to
call my father. We didn’t have a phone.
At the time he was the only one outside of my family that I
could speak with about what happened. He
would share his sadness with me at times as well. At different times throughout the years, even
when we weren’t as close, we would remember the sadness of those events. It was an honor to share a few moments of
silence with the one person that I knew understood how I felt at that time.
While our friendship helped each of us through sorrow, most
of our time together was full of joy, happiness, and on occasion mischief.
Speaking of the mischief, we had the fortune (our teacher’s
misfortune) of being in the same class in first grade. One day, for some now forgotten reason we stayed
longer in the lunchroom/gym instead of going outside for the longest
recess of the day. This was odd because
I loved lunch recess. I don’t remember
how long they lasted then, but it always seemed like we could accomplish an
unbelievable amount of play and recreation in the time allotted. On this day, however, we stayed inside long enough
to watch as the high schoolers came in for their lunch. Soon they were sitting all around us and,
magically, we became their entertainment.
I don’t remember how we started making them laugh…I think he started
calling them names and teasing them.
Eventually it led to a (I must say rather minor) food fight with a few
of the high school boys.
Realizing that we were going to completely miss recess, we
decided it was time to go outside to play.
(Unbeknownst to us we had already missed recess completely and were the
targets of an angry teacher’s focused search.)
On the way out, we thought it would be funny to tie one set of our
shoelaces together. Watching two first graders
do a version of the three-legged race to leave the lunchroom was highly
entertaining to all of the teenagers. Halfway
across the hardwood floor, I was looking down at our feet to make sure I could
step at the right time to avoid falling down.
Seemingly out of nowhere our teacher, face red with anger, was in front
of us. I don’t remember what she said
because several high schoolers started to heckle her or us. We knew we were in trouble, but the laughter
from the room made it seem not so serious.
Our teacher, on the other hand, was ready to leave the room and escape
the high schoolers. In order to hasten
our exit, she grabbed my friend by the hand and pulled him as fast as she could
toward the door. With a thud and a crash, I hit the floor as my foot was pulled out from under me.
Immediately, many of the high schoolers were on their feet
clapping and cheering. Our teacher was
beyond angry and embarrassed at this point, enough so that I began to worry
about my safety. My friend had a big
smile on his face as he soaked up the applause and admiration of our audience.
Roll forward a year to second grade. He and I were classmates again. Apparently the teachers didn’t discuss the
potentially disastrous dynamics of certain personalities in the same
classroom. Now, my second grade teacher
was possibly one of the meanest teachers I’ve ever had. Should others feel to defend her, they don’t
understand her level of cruelty because they were probably better behaved than was
I. She once made me miss my ride home,
as a second grader, because I had blown air into my crayon box and made what I
thought was a most excellent whistling noise.
(Unfortunately for her, she had to deal with my mother after that
episode.)
So, here we are in second grade and we really were trying
our best to behave. Our best just wasn’t
that great yet. He and I loved to
talk. One day our teacher had had
enough. In short order both of us were
behind fold out, cardboard closets with masking tape across our lips. As the shame of my situation started to
build, I suddenly found that the tape had come loose on my bottom lip. I was able to make a funny face and noise
when I moved my mouth. In short order I
was leaning, carefully, outside of my closet to make my friend and other
friends laugh. Soon our teacher was out
of fold out closets.
Now, my memory on the next part gets a little fuzzy. I think it happened while we were behind the
closets. My compatriot in mischief had
taken all he could and had to find another way to make someone laugh and I was
his target. He grunted and caught my
attention. Carefully I leaned out to
look at him. He had a crayon coming out
of each ear and made faces with his eyes.
I followed suit. Soon each of us
had a crayon in each ear and one in each nostril. At that point one or more of our classmates gave
us up as they laughed out loud.
Just then it was time for recess. As everyone went out, my friend and I were
detained in the classroom to write, several hundred times, the sentence: “I
will not stick crayons in my ears or up my nose.” After recess everyone else went to the
neighboring second grade classroom for some special activity involving the
principal. As we were writing the
sentences, the principal walked through our classroom to get to the event. Seeing us sitting there he asked what we were
doing.
“Writing sentences,” my friend said.
“What is the sentence,” asked the principal.
“I will not stick crayons in my ears or up my nose.”
Both of us were quite happy at his reaction, a happy laugh.
(I truly believe that my terrible penmanship started in
second grade as I was forced, due to my improper actions, to write what likely
was several thousand sentences as quickly as I could.)
As my friend and I moved onto junior high and high school,
we did less together as our interests diverged.
Despite that, we often would find ourselves spending time together quite
easily. He was an amazing bowler, who
would spend time, mostly in vain, to help me get better. When a new video game would come out, we
often would find ourselves crashing at his house for hours on a Saturday to
figure out how to beat it. After Little
League baseball, he didn’t have much to do with organized sports, which was too bad, because he was a talented
athlete. Anytime there was a softball
game, you wanted him on your team because he could hit the ball further than
anyone else.
He was almost always happy and he was kind to almost
everyone (except perhaps to those who were unkind). His smile was quick to brighten life for
everyone. Like me his level of mischief
decreased, but never completely. He was
friends with every kind and type of person. He would
help anyone.
My friend Mike Allred passed away this past weekend. It’s been years and years since I’ve spoken
with him and this makes me sad. I wish
we could have laughed together one more time, that we could have remembered
together the early sadness in our lives.
My last memory of him is this. It
was the day of our high school graduation.
We had just lined up outside of the Duchesne High School big gym so that
family, friends, and neighbors could congratulate us. I was standing there by Mike and my another
close friend. Mike and I were all
smiles, excited for the opportunities that were ahead of us and the amazing
memories that were behind us. Suddenly,
Mike and I noticed that our other friend’s eyes were filling with tears.
“Why are you crying,” we asked at the same time.
“It’s over, those fun years are over.”
All three of us teared up for a bit. He was right, those were fun years. But, I know that Mike brought years of fun
and happiness to many others after that.
That’s the Mike I will always remember.
