A Girl...

Ray

Last Thursday a baby girl was born to one of my best buds from high school (well, technically not my high school, but another one, where the Mormons send all the Catholic kids so they can keep an eye on them). Although a fair number of my friends from high school started pumping out babies even before their mortarboards hit the ground, I wasn't really close enough to any of them for it to count, and heck, by then I was a college girl, which placed me definitively outside the circle of the 18-year-old newlyweds/parents-to-be. I might have also distanced myself a bit too, dismissing these insta-family types based on the belief that most of them only do it because they can and not because after many years of thought and preparation they are finally ready to take on the whole bringing-a-life-into-the-world thing, treating it respectfully and reverently instead of just as something you do to be like the neighbors. "I got me baby just like the Sorensons down the block!" So anyway, this one--this five-day-old baby--counts, even though my friend didn't personally squeeze anything out of his vagina. Because he is a boy.

Whenever I think of Ray, I feel a little speck of something warm up the inside of my chest cavity. Ray at sixteen was sweet and shy and quick to laugh at my malarkey, always a great third wheel to have around when you need an extra person to finish those forty chicken nuggets you thought you could split between two. He used to practice flirting with me, always asking if the booming bass really made girls horny like it said in the magazines, and wondering if I thought his Metallica impressions were sexy. (He used to sing "Exit light, enter night, take my hand, take me to the Netherlands.") He was my boyfriend's best friend (hi, David!), and he not only endured our little lovefests but facilitated them, once helping us break into a baseball field at night so the three of us could look up at the moon and sing stupid songs, stretched out on the grass, dew in our hair.

Ray was obsessed with gadgets and policemen too (which is how he charmed the officer out of ticketing us for sneaking onto the field), and one of his favorite places to shop was Spy Headquarters, a store that sold Chinese throwing stars and road spikes and phone taps. One of the best summers of my life was spent listening to the police scanner in Ray's shiny black SUV with the vanity plate RAYDAR. We would wait for an interesting call, listen for the address (which I, as scribe and navigatrix--Secret Agent Pussycat--would record in a special spiral notebook), then go to the scene of the incident and watch the action unfold from across the street. Ray was trying to memorize the book of police codes so we'd know if "Code 34d" meant robbery in progress, traffic injury with multiple fatalities, or just a ball game blocking a neighborhood street. We were faster than the cops every single time. On nights we weren't out fighting crime in our nerdy passive-aggressive way, we would stick a yellow flashing light to the hood of the car and ride around sleepy Midvale yelling through a megaphone. If our friend Mark was with us, he would play "Reveille" on his trumpet out the window. (We also got pulled over for our flashing yellow light once--"Impersonating a police officer, a felony, son"--but got off because "We just want to be like you, officer *batt batt*.")

Honestly, I had my doubts that Ray would ever find the guts to talk to a girl--a real girl. There was one classmate--Lisa--who he thought was the most wonderful and gorgeous (not to mention well-endowed) creature to walk the earth, but it was this very appreciation and complete adoration that paralyzed him. He talked about Lisa for years and years, but we all knew it just wasn't gonna happen.

Then one day a good number of years ago he met a nice girl named Amanda who also loved CHiPs, and it was a done deal from there. And now they have a baby. I haven't talked to Ray for probably six or seven years, but I still have pictures of him hanging on the bulletin board in my kitchen from the day we learned that four teenagers DO NOT fit into one photo booth. That day at Lagoon Ray let me wear the batting helmet he won on the midway and shared my exaggerated enthusiasm for churros and yelled really really loud on the Tidal Wave. A good kid, that Raymond. Probably a good man too. Allyssa Maria, you're a lucky baby.