In my past life as an English teacher, I liked having my students do a little writing every class. Sometimes I’d use the NYTimes Writing Prompts, which is a treasure trove of questions. I thought I’d spent some a couple mornings a week answering a question that I pick completely random from this massive list. Picture a globe-trotter spinning the globe index finger primed to pick the next exciting destination, except I’m just sitting here scrolling up and down on a website before clicking with my mouse.

I’ll write for 25 minute, read it over once, and post it.

Today I landed on…

What Do You Remember Best About Being 12?

I was 12 in 1995, I was in sixth grade, and was living just outside Boston. I was in my third school in three years, a victim of a cross country move and then a disappointing fifth grade experience (for my parents, not me). I was starting at the all-boys school in the next town over, following a fifth grade year at the public school. I was not happy about it, but my parents didn’t care and forced me to change schools (in the long run, they were very right. And I would encourage more parents to make choices for their kids even if their kids don’t like them.)

We had moved from California the summer before. I was kinda fat. I was kinda awkward. I was decent at sports, and I loved them dearly. My brother was 8 (which is weirder to think about than remembering when I was 12). My sisters were 18 and 22, both out of the house for a while now because they both attended boarding high schools.

The funny part about my experience as a 12 year-old is that it did mark the start of some of my longest friendships, ones that still exist today. The summer before I started sixth grade, I attended a soccer camp where a tall, lanky kid befriended me named Phil. He was the best athlete at the camp. He wore high tops, loosely tied, and scored a million goals that week. No cleats. No problem. He was the type of kid you wanted to know you on the first day of school. I’m still friends with Phil to this day, and we’re actually meeting in Las Vegas next week for a few days of golf and March Madness gambling.

I also met Eliot during that 6th grade year. Our dads were friends back in the 80s before we moved to California, and it turned out that we both were going to the same school. Our dads picked up right where they left off. I’d say in many ways that my dad’s friendship with Rob was a model for what I’d look for in friendship and how to be friends. Rob and my dad, on the outside, were different. Rob had a cool, laid back vibe to him. Always joking around, but also incredibly smart and knew when it was time to work. My dad was more reserved, but Rob always managed to pull out my dad’s less serious side. Both men were intensely competitive, though. They ran the Boston Marathon together, Rob admitting he slowed my dad down considerably (and my dad not disagreeing…). Eliot and I bonded through hundreds of rounds of golf, and our dads ended up joining us on the course, too. If my dad was the running version of a scratch handicap, Rob was the literal scratch golfer, pulling my dad along in our father son matches (with my dad always managing to make some meaningful putt on the final three holes… I did say they were competitive, right?).

We traveled to Bermuda, Myrtle Beach, and Ireland as a group for the “Piss Pot Open.” Our annual father-son “tournament” where our dads guilted Eliot and I into giving my dad more strokes than he actually deserved. Rob got a hole-in-one on one of those trips, and his name is etched in the Mid-Ocean Club’s bar. Like two spoiled brats, Eliot and I were not happy about the 17th hole ace by Rob. It lost us our match and the Piss Pot Open.

But being 12 in 1995 was great. There were no stupid distractions. If you stayed up playing them all night, you were either just with your friends in the room or alone. When you were alone, you were truly alone. There was no phone to reach for, unless you wanted to make a call using a land line. There were more ways to escape in the mid-90s, and it didn’t mean I read more or did more homework or was a better person because I didn’t have technology at my fingertips like kids do now-a-days.

I remember my mom would drop me off at Kimball Farms for an entire afternoon. She’d hand me $20 and leave me at it. I’d get an extra large bucket of golf balls and hit them until my hands hurt. I’d go to the pitch and putt for another $4, or something like that, and play completely alone. Maybe I’d eat something, maybe I’d get a soda or an ice cream. My mom would come back and pick me up hours later, asking if I had any change and if I had put on sun screen (no and… probably no).

Our new house had two basketball hoops, one on each side of the drive way. Both hoops could be raised and lowered, so I could dunk. Which was amazing for an average white kid. It was my favorite part of the house, by far. We didn’t have cable, so those summer days were spent outside running around (or upstairs playing indoor soccer with my brother). Being the loner I was, I would play one-on-one basketball with myself, running up and down the court, doing play-by-play (practicing for those radio days at Holy Cross…). I ran up and down, hitting shots, (even stealing the ball from myself). I probably looked like a maniac, but I didn’t care.

Twelve was probably the last year for many people before the true painful awkwardness of adolescence slams into us with full force. Working in a middle school for thirteen years, I realized how grateful I was to attend an all-boys school. Sure it slowed any sort of social growth I had with the opposite sex, but I was just able to be a stupid, gross, insecure, awkward boy. I made some of my closest friends, which were the starting point of a lot of great trips and stories.

That’s what I remember about being 12. Hard to believe it was nearly 25 years ago…