Baker's Dozen: In 13 Days, Justin Baker and the World Will Change

Fitzgerald

It’s our generation. Nobody hears us. I think it’s because we don’t have anything to say. Wow that was pretentious… right? No really I don’t know how people do this. Write I mean. That’s gotta be some living, but I don’t really know how people live doing it. How must you feel like when someone asks you What do you do? and you say Well, I write. That’s not a job, not at all. But you probably get more money, at least more recognition, than they do. And they’re the real people, the real workers, doing the real things to keep everything really moving. So how could you be a writer, writing, thinking that people really care about what you have to say when you’re the one cog that isn’t turning? I don’t know what that feels like. So I’m glad I don’t have an audience. I’m glad this is just between you and me. But in case it gets out to anyone else – believe me, I know, I’m an ass.

I don’t even know how to start. Think back. Third grade maybe, the basics. Beginning, middle and end. I’m glad this is a journal so I don’t necessarily need any of those, but I guess they wouldn’t hurt. Maybe keep things interesting. Oh crap, I forgot the first step to every journal, the date.

Friday, August 31st

That’s good, italicized and pretty. Oh, the year’s 2001, but I didn’t really want to feel like I was heading a paper or anything. This is supposed to be fun, right? I don’t know, I’ve never kept a journal, but when kids at school say they write for fun, or that it’s a hobby, I always get this weird emotional slushy of disgust and curiosity. That stems from the following: 1) if you write for fun you’re either a vast cavern of despair and angst that’s buried deep from mainstream society, or 2) for lack of a better word, or maybe just to appeal to a universal understanding you are a nerd. You define the stereotype – glasses, D&D, dragon t-shirts and a deck of Magic cards in your pocket – you run the gamut, and you’re proud. To be fair, this would also mean these are the stereotypical deep and smart people, so there must be something to it, right? So why not give it a shot. Here we go, knuckles cracked and everything. I’m ready to start, I promise. Well I guess I already did. I don’t know how much I liked it though. Let’s try again, okay?

Drum roll… please. No, no – I have it. I’ll pause for effect. Ah ha. Did you pause? Okay. My name is Justin Baker. I am 17 years old. I live in the American Midwest, the heart of it all. Just believe our license plates. By legal definition I am a boy, (juvenile to go with the jargon). By my school’s counting I am a Senior, by my parents’ I am a young man. That means I should be paying car insurance, but I’m really just buying DVD’s. It also means I can’t get into Chuck E. Cheese by myself, but I am too old for it which no matter what you try to say is one of the great paradoxes of our universe by my standards. It also means I’m young enough to have dreams and consistently told I can reach them regardless. But we all know that really there’s just a cubicle waiting for all of us. And besides, I waste all of my lofty dreaming on that one girl three rows over and four seats up in first period. You know the one I’m talking about. We all dream about her.

But when I’m awake, well, that’s when I’m living. That’s when I’m living my life while millions of others my age live theirs concurrently. And with so many lives living all at once, with so much laughing and crying and gossip and last-minute cramming and all-important teenage love happening all in the instance of a second so many millions of times over, that’s when I start to wonder how there can be a cubicle for all of us. And I ask how my one millionth of that one second can be any better or worse than the next guy’s. And I guess that’s why I’m writing right now. I guess I’m writing because twelve years ago I thought more like an Ewok, and now that I’m going into 12th grade I’m starting to meditate more like Yoda. And tell me if I’m wrong, but I think I just showed signs of the dark mysterious cavern and the invariable nerd. I assure you I’m neither. I’m just me. I’m just Justin Baker, and if you really want to know why I’m writing, well, it’s probably because of a feeling that I rarely ever feel but that lately I just can’t shake, nostalgia.

You ask why. It’s not the coolest feeling to have really, nostalgic sentiment. And it’s probably not the manliest. After all, girls are the ones with shoeboxes filled with mementos and scrapbooks filled with pictures, not dudes. But I am a dude and being that I have no desire to scrapbook, I might as well write. So why start today? Today was the first Friday of my senior year, which got me to thinking. I only have so many of these left. But I only thought about that after this one was so good that I realized maybe I never wanted them to stop coming. It all started with the girl three rows over and four seats up in first period. It all started with the one we all dream about.

First periods are always rough. We all know that. Too tired, announcements too long, and the work too pointless. But if there’s ever a reason to wake up in the morning besides the relentless cawing of your Mother, it’s her smile. So it all started with my head down on my desk first period.

Hey…

Too distant.

Hey… I felt a tapping on my head this time, nothing worth getting up for.

Bakes, Leah wants you. Let me tell you, that’s one name any guy in this school would love to wake up to, so I did.

Alright Crawford where is she?

Door, he said.

Alright, I better establish some setting. In Journalism it’s all your responsibility to get your projects in on time, no real cattle prodding. So on a day like today there’s really nothing to do. This means every morning’s the equivalent of the water cooler at your Dad’s office. Everyone’s talking about what happened on fill-in-the-blank last night or who’s doing fill-in-the-blank this weekend. I didn’t find any of the gossip interesting enough to stay up for so I figured maybe I’d dream some up, until her name came along.

But Crawford, well Billy Crawford is a guy you can’t quite put your finger on. Somehow he seems to know everyone. He floats without effort from one clique to the next and he seems to get by doing it with an aura of good humor. The thing about Billy Crawford is there’s no real reason to dislike him, but everyone only seems to like him because it’s the cool thing to do. So when Billy Crawford, the good humored thrower of punch lines, woke me up to tell me Leah wanted me I should have known better.

Leah, well there’s two of them in my graduating class and both of them mean a good deal to me. But the Leah everyone dreams about, that’s not the one that wanted me. Instead of three rows over and four seats up, my attention was drawn to the doorway of our class.

There stood Leah Rand, a girl I’ve known for at least a good five years now, maybe six – and known very well, which means we’re not always particularly fond of each other. To spare you the details for now, if there’s one good phrase that describes Leah Rand, it’s the girl next door. Every cliché is rooted in some truth.

I yawned and rubbed an eye. A little early to be interrupting classes, don’t you think?

Not for our senior year, she said.

I’ll give you that one, so what’s up? I then noticed Ms. Rand was looking particularly nice today.

Are you going to the game tonight?

Well, yah. You should know if you go to high school in the mid-west that on Friday night you will be at your school’s football game.

With me? she was curious.

Well, I don’t know exactly, but it only is first period. I make a ritual of keeping my options open. Some might say I’m just indecisive.

Fine, I see how it is. Leah said this half jokingly, which means obviously she was half serious, and this is about how everyone communicates in high school. You tell a girl she’s hot and you want to date her, and you tag on a simple, just kidding eliminating any chance of awkwardness. Knowing this, I knew how to respond.

No, no you know I’d go with you. It’s just I don’t know who else is going – we’ll talk later. It’s not a big deal or anything. Where are you supposed to be anyways?

Psychology, but I haven’t been there yet.

That’s risky, why not?

Well, I was late because last night I was on the phone until like three in the morning with Regess, so I accidentally slept through my alarm. This was curious to me.

I thought you and Regess broke up.

Me and you talk on the phone. Does that mean we’re together? I guess we had opposing viewpoints on the keys to a relationship.

I wish, I said, half jokingly.

She gave me a ha and then started on her way for Psych.

Here’s the thing about Leah Rand. She’s a juggler. Some juggle pins or produce. Leah Rand juggles men. And that’s why I’m not always fond of Leah Rand, either because I don’t want to be juggled, or because I want to be but am never considered. The truth is I’m not totally sure. But when friends of mine are, like Jesse Regess, my heart goes out to them.

Now I was being called out to go back to my seat.

Sure Ms. Norris, sorry – you know, business. I told her.

Oh yeah, sorry all this class time gets in the way of your kids business, Ms. Norris’s a crazy lady. Her hair is all frizzled, or frazzled, or whatever you’d like to say. For that reason we often wondered if she kept a magic school bus somewhere hidden in the expanse of the parking lot. But she could also be eccentric and paranoid, her glasses always gleaming with flashes of conspiracy theory. Maybe that’s why she was the Journalism teacher. But it was for her old days as the elementary gym teacher that we feared her discipline, because of her mastery of the martial arts we had seen long ago we called her Chuck, and feared her like a Texas Ranger.

So what’d she want? Crawford wondered as I sat down.

Nothing, just to know who I was going to the game with.

Who are you going with? said Crawford the social butterfly, peeking from his cocoon.

I’m not sure yet. Why who are you going with? I left him a door open in case he was looking to go with me and whomever.

Oh, Leah – the other one. Well, talk to you later. Gotta get back to business you know.

Never mind. I think he just wanted to show off.

Yeah, business, I said, and then I let my eyes wander to Leah (the other one) three rows over and four seats up, well, in terms of tables anyways.

She was talking with a few other girls not quite of her social status. But she was genuinely friends with them, and she laughed her own ditty of a laugh, which I think would be distinctive to anyone, not just me. It was much more of a he-he than a ha ha. Oh well, what am I talking about? I’m describing Leah Leslan. For the record, Leah Leslan is of the same social type as Billy Crawford, except she puts Billy Crawford to shame. Because like Billy, she can hang out with anyone, but unlike Billy she calls the elite home – whereas Billy, when he’s not hanging out with anyone else, settles at a lower level. Truth be told no one is particularly picky about the whole levels of the social stratosphere thing, not this late in the game anyways. Everyone talks to everyone almost always cordially and without sarcasm, but everyone still knows who you go with and what row you’re in at the football games on Friday nights. What defines your own social status is not school time itself, but after hours. I guess if you work enough over time with enough people you can be Billy Crawford.

And there’s the other difference. Everyone knows who Billy Crawford is but everyone wants to know Leah Leslan. I’m lucky. I know Leah Leslan. She is a friend. I just don’t see her much after hours. Billy Crawford does. And that’s why I don’t like Billy Crawford quite as much as everyone else. Because me and Billy Crawford, well, we both know what direction we’re both looking in first period. And today we both know who ended up at the doorway.

In class I lost my train of thought thinking about all of this, and the next thing I knew there Billy was, moving into conversation with her. And now her more subtle he-he’s had turned into robust ha-ha’s, and I’d run out of reasons to stay awake.

First Ms. Norris snapped me out of my day dream. You going to work on your article today or what?

Is Billy? Taking my chances against the risk of kung fu I put my head down.

That’s how the day started, nothing too terrible but nothing to actually work on my project over either, not that I even knew what I was going to do.

Lunch comes a few periods later, and that’s where I’m headed now, at least for the sake of this writing. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t know the significance of the cafeteria. It’s where any and all social lines are drawn most obviously, and they’re done so geographically nonetheless. Goths in the East, underclassmen in the West, achievers with books and copiers with pens and blank paper at the ready in the South, and the hot chick table in the North, just like the northern lights, always dazzling and never realizing they are the center of interest for every table in there. Or maybe they do.

So, my friends and I sit down in the southwest, not because we’re achievers or copiers, and definitely not because we’re underclassmen, just because we needed a table big enough. Here’s something interesting about my friends and me. There’s a lot of us. Ok maybe not that interesting, but I’d say there’s at least twenty of us around that table on any given day. The other thing is we’ve know each other, or at least most of us have, for a very long time. From recess playing Donkey Kong jumping from tire to tire on the playground in second grade, to recess playing smear the queer in sixth grade (there’s nothing politically correct about playground games by the way, so save it) to now, sitting around that table with lunches still packed courtesy of mom still talking about the same table in the north we had been since before we ever had Sex Ed in Health class. That’s who we were and are, the guys. I couldn’t call us anything else except for well… ha, ready for story time?

This is how the guys really became the guys. My biggest achievement in school, and arguably all of the guys’s was a little thing called RT. If you remember rt from school you’re remembering d=rt from either your Physics or Math class, and that’s not what I’m talking about, so don’t check out yet. In ninth grade we created an empire. It all started with Ben really. First of all, Ben’s an unassuming kid. Ben is also arguably my best friend. I don’t know who’s arguing though. But every high school cliché I’ve ever known Ben’s never got caught up in. He’s mostly straight A’s without ever having attended a chess club meeting in his life. He gets the grades because he does – not because he cares or shows it. He never got too caught up in the school spirit thing, but he’s not one of those whiney, I hate this place and these people paint-your-nails-black- pierce-your-nipple types of people either. When all of us get caught up in girls, and fall harder than a piano in a Looney Toon, Ben’s still playing his peacefully. The thing about Ben is he’s always been Ben and never anything or anyone else, and he’s never changed. That’s the thing about most of us guys though. We’re all who we are, and we all have some quirks that are almost sitcom-esque, but for as many years as I can remember we’ve all been accepted around here for who we are. But it wasn’t until ninth grade that we all really pulled together and began hanging out all together at a time. It wasn’t until ninth grade that the Rancid Teddybears became a reality and RT bent the rules of the social game.

Ben named RT and was its unofficial leader until it all kind of collapsed on us because of egos. You know in those movies or TV shows about high school when someone in Home Ec gets that fake baby they have to take care of for a week? Well, in ninth grade we created this faux little society that we were trying to nurse, and for the longest time it was running without a hitch. It had a ridiculously humble beginning, a bunch of people meeting at Ben’s house before a football game of all things, when his Dad came from upstairs and said the fateful words, You guys look like a gang or something.

Then Ben responded with those even more fateful words Yah, we’re the Rancid Teddybears. Just two random words the kid had in his head.

I’ll admit it, I wasn’t even there but I know the story well enough to tell second hand. But I did meet them at the game, and as a joke I did become one of the RT members. Somehow over the following weeks and months that year the joke grew into something real. I know the perfect comparison if you know what I’m talking about. Have you ever seen This Is Spinal Tap? Hilarious movie, please watch it right away if you haven’t, but if you have, you know what I mean. Here’s this mockumentary about a heavy metal band that wasn’t even real but then ended up touring in real life anyways. That’s kind of like what RT was.

Well when I was in ninth grade some of the more popular fellows formed a union they called Mutiny. You have to wonder if they even knew what that meant, but to them it was a Crypts for suburbia. They were all ghetto, which means they were more BET than CMT, even though this area’s more CMT than anything else – even though we are the MTV generation, but whatever. Point is they took this thing seriously enough that it was funny. It was taking the clique concept to a whole new level.

So when RT commenced it was the anti-clique. It was the satire of all high school allegiances and mainly a playful poke at those in Mutiny. Really it wasn’t supposed to be anything but a joke. We had ridiculous gang symbols that ranged from flapping our tongues around to various finger contortions that represented the titles of our favorite songs. Yes, it was that weird, which made it all the weirder when it got accepted. RT was a joke that changed the realities of ninth grade, arguably the last grade where popularity really mattered, where it was still impossible to talk to some and too disgraceful to talk to others. RT was a club with one rule. Anyone’s allowed in. And that’s why it was revolutionary. We even had teachers in it for Pete’s sake. Maybe if we weren’t taking it as such a joke we wouldn’t have done that, accepted everyone I mean, but I’m glad we did. Anyone who wanted in and was willing to take themselves a little less seriously was a Rancid Teddybear. If you didn’t mind adopting a gang member name that could have ranged from anything from Steakhouse to Icebox, Jnco or D-Spoon, Ponyboy or Half Pipe then you were in. Heck, Mutiny even started to sweat it and challenged us to fight once thinking we were something, I don’t know, formidable. And because we were accepting everyone, we started talking to everyone too. And because we were talking to everyone, every anxiety about who you could and couldn’t talk to, about who was too cool and who wasn’t cool enough, started to disintegrate. In ninth grade I learned an important lesson that I try daily not to forget, people are people. No better, no worse, just different. Some will work for you, and some won’t, but you’ll never know who unless you give them the chance. Then again those who live the best by this concept maybe are those like Billy Crawford, who do know everyone and disarm their shields of status. I’m more of a cordial observer. People like Billy Crawford are out there on the prowl.

But the Teddybears got too big. We even had a website, with a message board, and that’s where it started to fall apart. It’s where we argued - the people who wanted it to get bigger, people who wanted it to get smaller, people who took it seriously, people who still thought it was a joke - and eventually RT went out like a fad and all those members we took in fell away and might have forgotten it ever existed. But not the guys. Even though it ended we never stopped being proud of it. And even though we argued it into the ground we never forgot those symbols. And even though we lost a ridiculous name for ourselves we remained together, as the guys. And as we went into high school and all started taking up our own hobbies and interests, no one ever really defected and no one was ever really rejected, at least not for forever. Even guys fight sometimes.

See, I told you I was feeling sentimental lately. I don’t even know if this is interesting anymore. Maybe it needs to be funnier. Yah, funny – there’s the ticket. Platypus. Pllll aaaaatttyyyypussssss. Who takes their time to write something like platypus? I-------I do. Come on; just think about one, maybe one juggling on a unicycle. There you go. Good stuff.

Maybe after that little display of childishness you won’t mind if I act like a more mature person sometimes.

That reminds me, I’d better get back to lunch. So we’re all sitting there – and we’re arguing about the news that day. This is another strange thing about us but believe me it’s true, we’ll argue about politics, religion, and those higher concepts before we’d argue about which Creed song we like least, although we have those arguments too.

So on this particular day we were going around about something that came up in our AP History class. Okay, not ours, I just aided in it. But we probably wouldn’t have known anything about it if our teacher didn’t bring it up, so I guess that’s a good thing – a teacher staying informed.

Apparently, like kids taunting each other on the play ground, but on a more explosive level, we (that’s the US by the way) had tossed some missiles into a missile base in northern Iraq. Then a few days later they shot down one of our planes that came in from Kuwait, but it wasn’t even known if it was piloted or remotely controlled. I know this is all extremely interesting, believe me it was to me too but it’s not necessarily the issue but our reaction that I remember.

I guess maybe I’m a bit of a conservative, and by that I mean last November on election night Ben and I were playing Mario Kart, one of us calling our cart Bush, the other Gore, and racing to see who’d win the election. Well we both wanted Bush, because I’d call Gore a tree-hugger (gasp!) but we thought since we couldn’t vote we might as well play video games. As it turned out, after a few circuits they were nearly tied, with Bush just one or two races up. I don’t know exactly; it’s been a while. Well anyways, as fate would have it, and as we all know Bush won, and I say won because I don’t know how many thousands of people in this country would like to say he didn’t, but our race was just as close. I’ve got to confess; if the ball had fallen in Gore’s court I’d probably want it back too. Or maybe we should just evict Florida from the Union altogether. The way I see it you look at that map of the US and who won what state and I see a whole lot of red, and the Electoral College is what the Electoral College does. Look, all I’m saying is he hasn’t been President long enough for me to say he’s great or terrible, but I just feel more comforted he’s inhabiting the oval. Besides, I’m sick of talking about it and seeing Not My President t-shirts with his face plastered on them everywhere. Dear God I have to get defensive even when I’m talking to myself.

What that doesn’t mean however is that I won’t find my way into an argument with my friends.

I say we just bomb the Middle East to Hell! a voice of the uninformed. You get a lot of that either way around here. Kids who bury themselves in the woods in camo and slaughter on the weekends see our arsenal as a peace treaty, and kids who hate Bush and when you ask why they say, because he’s dumb, and when you ask how they know they say because they saw it on Saturday Night Live. But I’ve gotta give it to those kids, SNL really had a great run there last year.

Shut up Andy, you suck. I’d attach that quote to a specific person, but it was pretty much shared by the whole table, Andy was one of the weekend camo-slaughterers and was just passing by the table anyways.

Problem is, I got identified with this type of person because I said we needed to finish what we started back in ’91 and ‘92 and put Saddam out. Some of the others, well, they begged to differ.

Like Jack. Jack, well Jack is an ass (no pun intended), a good friend of an ass, but he’s got a machete of a tongue and he’ll cut anyone at will. Which isn’t always bad. He just tells it like it is, from his point of view. But the kid’s smart, and he can make you feel, well… less so. Starting about…

Blessed are the peacemakers, how ‘bout that you self righteous pig? Now. Yes, this is my friend.

Yeah, how can you be so dumb to think we could just go in there and get out without a problem? Yes, him too. That’s Jordan Coppentz. We call him Copp.

You’re such a douche, following Bush blindly into whatever he says, and you don’t even know what you’re talking about. He wasn’t even elected. There’s Karl, and oh yah, even him.

Maybe they’re all a little like Jack. All a little sharp tongued. Maybe someone like Billy Crawford could use friends like these to keep him grounded. I did my best to defend myself. I could have used Ben, but I think he just knows to keep his mouth shut.

First of all, you leave a madman unchecked the peace is bound to be disrupted. Second, the first Gulf War took a matter of days, and don’t forget Clinton lobbed some missiles there. Third, Bush was elected, and I wouldn’t follow him blindly into anything. I disagree with him on some things.

Like what? Jack Dunly wondered.

I don’t know, never mind. I could have said any number of things I’m sure, but I just get so exhausted going back and forth with these guys, and it starts to tear at the insides. They’re my best friends the guys, you know? But whenever one of those higher concepts comes up, well – whether they support war or not we go to it. I don’t thirst for blood, but I believe in good and evil I suppose, and Saddam just never seemed like a nice guy. At least these guys would go to a barbeque with W, I think.

Look, really we shouldn’t even be arguing. This was just a minor occurrence in the big scheme of things. I doubt we’ll ever go to war with Saddam again. We shouldn’t even have to; maybe use a hit squad or something if anything. The point is I don’t see how we’d ever hit him unless he hit us first, and I don’t see how he ever will, so I don’t think we’ll ever even need to worry about it. He’s just not a good guy. I think we can agree on that. Sorry I brought it up.

This is what’s killing me about America right now. Maybe I’ve just always been too young to realize it, but it seems like everyone’s so bitterly divided that at any moment we could break into a civil war on abortion, or tax law, or hanging chads. I’ve never seen such bitter division. Everyone’s so ready to pounce on and destroy any other person’s opinion that compromise seems like a dinosaur of the 1700’s. There was unity once, I’m sure. In the forties everyone seemed to be on the same page, maybe, but now it feels like there isn’t a page at all, just shredding paper being torn to dust in argument. And it’s all over who likes an elephant or a donkey more. Screw em’ both. Who wants what’s best for a circus attraction or a horse knock off, how bout the people? Someday I hope there’s something we can agree on. But who am I to talk. When I can vote, it’ll probably be for a circus attraction. Maybe it’s just our generation. Maybe no one can hear us because everyone’s shouting their own rhetoric at the top of their lungs. Maybe no one can hear us because no one’s listening.

Platypus. I’m sorry, I’ll get a new device. So some more verbal slapping happened at the table and then Tommy walked up. Tommy is not a senior. Tommy is a freshman and Tommy is a sibling in a small sect called the Micklesons. Evan is the youngest, sixth grade or something. Tommy’s the middle, Patrick’s the oldest, and that’s how we got into the sect anyways. Ol’ Trick used to be one of the D&D loving Magic card carrying types, and in those RT days we picked him up. The results we couldn’t have predicted.

For most hours of any given summer day in those few months of freedom we’re granted annually, you could find any number of us swimming in the Mickleson’s pool, or eating the Mickleson’s Doritos and watching old 80’s staples on Comedy Central using the Mickleson’s cable. In short Ol’ Trick’s dad, Ray had granted us a haven in his own home. I think everyone had that default place to go and hang out, or meet up or chill or whatever in their day, and for the guys it had undoubtedly become the pool, the yard, the living room and the kitchen of the Mickleson home. Maybe it just made sense because it was so sitcom-esque like the rest of us (though I’ll admit there was nothing funny about the preceding conversation – not a good day for us I guess). But anyways, like I was saying he was a single dad raising three boys in his home of some 15 odd years where nary a decorative basket nor a flowery border could be found. For a bunch of high school guys it felt more like an extension of our own bedrooms. That’s probably why we feel so comfortable roughing the place up every now and then, and the door is always open. For those reasons, our thank you in return was always helping a Mickleson in need.

Hey Tommy, I got to him first.

Heeeeeeeey. You’ve got to understand Tommy. Tommy is a character. He speaks in prolonged deep vowels like a baritone holding out a note. He’s not dumb, but he’s not the fastest out of the gate and you will never see him in anything but jeans and a white t shirt. Tommy is in ninth grade, but we’re Tommy’s friends and through all of those hours in his home he had effectively become one of the guys.

What do you want Tommy?! Copp slapped him