My Worst Friend

May 13, 2023

I never experienced the luxury of growing up with cousins in the same town, or friends with me from toddlerhood through high school and beyond. I was blessed with many wonderful friends, but each had a window of time, maybe one year, maybe four, that we shared daily contact. Because I have relocated and “started over” so many times, it would be hard to claim one person was my “best” friend, but one stands out as my “worst” friend.

Celia could be brutal, not maliciously, but deliciously so. Perhaps more than anyone else, she steered me away from taking myself too seriously. We’d be having a serious discussion, or I’d be harping on something and she’d pipe up with, “Hey! You’ve got a point there. Put a hat on and nobody will notice it!” Not that she was confrontational, per se, but if she observed someone getting carried away with himself, she’d say, “Man! Give him an inch and he thinks he’s a ruler!”

Sharper than any tack I’d ever stepped on, she was brimming with those quips and she spat them out like watermelon seeds at a picnic. She was the chief of the friendly challenge, the queen of the snappy retort. It was not her job to sugarcoat or mollycoddle.

I remember playing one-on-one basketball in her driveway. I had fingertips on the rebounding ball when she literally tackled me to the ground, stole the ball, and scored a point. As I unfolded my body and knocked the embedded gravel from both knees, I noted the stream of blood pooling in my shoe.

“Ha!” she barked. “Are you going to let a little bit of blood interrupt our game? Your shot!”

So we continued playing until my foot was sloshing and sliding around inside my shoe to the point that it became hard to plant my feet. We concluded the game, cleaned up my wounds and went on to some other activity.

Celia took no prisoners. But she was multi-faceted with all the sparkle of a brilliant gemstone, and she was just plain fun to be with! Despite her well rehearsed bravado, she was a sensitive and kind person. We shared one very close friend, Michael, a trumpet player who was the most loving and protective brother to each of us. He and Celia had been next door neighbors for several years and their mothers were best friends. Although Michael was Jewish and Celia Catholic, the families always exchanged Christmas presents. One year Michael’s mother shoved a wrapped gift in his hand and told him to take it to school and give it to Celia. She opened it in Band class and nearly pummeled Michael.

“You gave me UNDERWEAR for Christmas?!” she exclaimed. “How embarrassing!”

“What?” he was incredulous. “Ma! What have you done to me?!” he demanded of his absent mother.

It was a half-slip imprinted with a colorful psychedelic design. Michael’s mother thought it was the perfect gift for a spirited teenage girl. But, she failed to tell Michael what he was giving her.

Celia and I did stupid and obnoxious things together. In school, we had two daily routines walking in the corridors between classes. Despite this being snowy, cold Rhode Island, Rogers High School was a wondrous maze of glass-enclosed corridors joining several different buildings, each building being entered through double glass doors. Always when entering the Math building, we crashed through those doors side by side pulsing the theme song of an old TV show, Ben Casey, MD. The show had always begun with a gurney crashing through the doors of the ER to the thrumming of the theme song. And while walking down the hall of the Language Arts building, at the top of our lungs we sang the overlapping parts of a popular, yet stupid song called “Guitarzan.” More than once a teacher or two yelled at us to stop it. Outside of school, while walking down Newport’s fashionable Belleview Avenue, we dance/marched down the wide sidewalks singing our band parts (She played flute and I played clarinet). On occasion, we were with other friends from the Band who joined us in this particular activity.

As outgoing as she seemed, Celia was actually shy. She had a crush on another cute trumpet player named Angus. Okay, he didn’t go by that, but Angus was his middle name and Celia’s codename for him. Celia and Angus hadn’t even spoken to each other. In fact, I wasn’t sure he even had a voice!

How long did this secret crush go on before Celia finally spoke to him?

Especially on snowy days, Angus tried to keep a low profile. Perhaps that was because his father was the Superintendent of the school system, that horrible man who never allowed us a Snow Day, even when every other school system in New England was closed. In Newport back in the late 1960s, snow sometimes fell from October and covered the ground until late March, or even into April.

Our Band Director called Wednesday night rehearsals in the winter either to prep for the Christmas concert, or maybe for the spring Exchange Concert with bands from Massachusetts, Maine, or Connecticut.

Mother really hated driving me on a cold night to and from those rehearsals, so I’d often get her to drop me off with the promise to get someone else to take me home.

On this particular night, there had been a very recent blizzard that left deep drifts along the snow fences, hedges, etc. The main roads had been cleared and were passable. Now, Celia had recently turned 16 and gotten her driver’s license and was sometimes allowed to take her mother’s car. As she’d headed out in the car for rehearsal, her mother’s parting words were, “Do NOT drive Barbara Hartley all the way out to Fort Adams tonight! Come straight home!”

There was another very important factor working that night. I don’t know how it came about, but Celia was giving Angus a ride home! Yes, this was the first time she’d ever gotten him alone – and in her car! It took me quite a bit of convincing to get her to go two miles out of her way to drop me home.

“It will give you a few minutes extra time in the car with Angus!” I explained.

With trepidation, she caved. I rode in the back so she could have Angus seated next to her. She worried about turning around once she’d dropped me off. The roads were like tunnels with 4-foot-high walls of packed snow on either side.

“Oh! You don’t have to turn around,” I told her. “Just take the back road that loops around the base and comes out at the Admiral’s house! No turn necessary!”

Out I hopped and went in the front door. About 15 minutes later, in the cold dark night, there was a knock at the back door. “Who on Earth?” Mother wondered.

Standing on the stoop, snow covered and trembling, stood Celia and Angus. The back road had not been plowed and Celia had driven right into the snow, expecting to be able to plow through it. Of course, she got stuck and the two of them had tried their best before walking the block and a half back to my house.

Dad, already settled in for the night in his pajamas and robe, groaned. Immediately, he pulled on his snow suit, hat, gloves, boots, and grabbed a shovel, rope, blanket, and chains. He and Angus trekked out to the car and returned after about 20 minutes to pick up Celia.

The whole time, Celia was fussing at me for misleading her and ruining her chance with Angus. “I finally get him alone in the car with me and we get stuck in the snow! He must think I PLANNED this! Oh, everything is ruined and it’s all your fault!”

As it turned out, Dad had saved the day (or night). Celia’s mother never noticed that she got home late, and eventually I was forgiven.

Oh, and Celia and Angus have now been married for how many decades?