Storytelling takes account of the shoddy memories of the teller. My memories and the gaping holes in them make the tale more interesting, sometimes taking it off the rails into the depths of what can only be considered borderline lying. Those details often make it palatable, so I hope my recollection will be relatively accurate and honest. Well, as truthful as a storyteller can be!

1987. One of my least favorite high school years. Then again, nothing about my teenage life was what you’d call easy or painless. And I’m not talking about the ordinary, everyday high school experience. As teenagers, life is tough enough without the extraneous emotional trauma that some, not all of us, would experience.

Did I suffer the same kind of barbaric torture that other newcomers to high school would? Not even close. Did it help that I knew the senior class of my private high school, which consisted of twelve students? Or that I knew all the juniors, the graduating class of 1988? Yeah. That probably helped.

Attending a private Christian high school also had drawbacks. A smaller school meant we didn’t have the same programs that public high schools offered; for instance, we didn’t have a home economics class. Or a gymnasium. Or a well-known basketball or baseball team. The sports we had barely had enough students to participate in, not that it would’ve mattered to me. I wasn’t a sporting kind of kid. I preferred to watch movies and television, listening to how they wrote the stories and incorporating them into my own works of fiction. Another advantage: My English teachers throughout my education loved me and my attention to telling a good story, especially my high English teachers.

Brent Alexander. He was one of the seniors who knew both me and my family. His Dad and my Dad co-taught a Sunday school class together when Brent was in 6^th grade. Brent stood out only because of his role in the modern-day version of Jesus’ parable, the Good Samaritan, a video project that the Dad’s decided would help the kids remember the parable. Bill, Brent’s Dad, and Joe, my Dad, worked with the kids on script development, and then they created a shot list to film the project all day Saturday. And Brent’s role, from me watching the video multiple times? Riding a bike in a historic cemetery in Dublin, California, Brent stopped long enough to look down at the beat-up man, saying, “I’m not getting involved.”

So, having enjoyed the time at the shoot with all these ‘older kids’ meant some preferential treatment. And I don’t know if Brent liked me or not. It didn’t matter because I looked up to him. I thought he was one of the cool kids because he had an intelligent way of communicating ideas. And he was fun!

On one occasion, he shot some pictures of me and a girl I was dating, dating being a loose term. Were we exclusive? Yes. Was it because no one else wanted to date us? Maybe. Did it matter to either of us? I don’t think it mattered to her, but it did to me.

The part I’m fuzzy on here is whether or not he volunteered to take pictures of us or if I asked him. Either way, it doesn’t matter because he came to my house, driving the newly acquired Chevy Vega. Was it a wagon or a two-seater? I don’t remember. Was it loud? I don’t recall that either, but I remember the cassette player, something every teen driver in the 1980s needed.  

I remember bits and pieces from the photo shoot. Like Marcelle wasn’t ready for us to have our pictures taken, even though she wore makeup that day, something that was a rarity on a Saturday. She was also wearing a lovely jean skirt, the acid-washed dark material, which made it difficult for her to pose on the stairs with me. Brent had a way with words, something I’ll never forget about him. He taught me the value of looking people in the eye when you talk to them because if you do that? You can say anything you want, and they’ll believe you. This is a skill I still use to this day. At some point during the photo shoot, we all got hungry, so I raided our cabinets, looking for snacks. Where were my brothers and Dad? I don’t recall. I don’t know if they were in the house or not. But we managed to snag some Cool Ranch Doritos, a new product for Frito-Lay, probably something to compliment New Coke, the biggest disaster of the cola industry.

Brent pulled one of the chips out of the bag, and the dusting of flavor seasonings coated that particular chip. “Look at those Cool Ranch spices,” he said, emulating a newly released Frito-Lay commercial highlighting their newest product. Marcelle lost it, smiling so big and wide that the pictures shot after he made that comment were some of the best ones on the contact sheet.

“But what about Duran Duran? And the Vega?”

So, the following Saturday, Brent came over and took me back to his house in Livermore in the Vega. It was a twenty-minute drive, give or take, so we had time to talk about music and listen to Duran Duran and David Bowie. He played two songs from Bowie, and we talked about both tunes, China Girl and Let’s Dance.

But Duran? That’s a story for another day.