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Like the wind, words are easy; faithful friends are harder to find.

When I was young, my idea of inappropriate was simply whatever seemed out of place: mismatched, or not appealing. I don’t think we were as careful about our words in those days: not as respectful of difference; not as tolerant of other cultures; and certainly not as charitable with those who didn’t look like us; didn’t act like us…

I remember being laughed at as a child in grade school because I couldn’t whistle at girls in the playground. I was accused of being, well, in the language of the time, a homo. In today’s Zeitgeist that expression would not stand unchallenged of course, but in those lumpy times, many neologisms were not considered suspect. When I tried to explain that my inability to whistle was because the dental braces I wore made my lips bleed if I attempted a whistle-pucker, it was merely regarded as suspicious, evasive. That I was a shy, short, and bespectacled boy with curly hair only seemed to trap me in the role I was assigned.

I wasn’t bullyed (I could usually outrun bullies), nor remotely effeminate except, I suppose, for my love of reading and the occasional childish poetry I attempted to show Miss Grady, our Grade 8 Art teacher; I’d like to believe I was able to transcend the persistent kidding about those things, but in fairness, I don’t think I fit in with most of the kids at school anyway. I mean they wondered why anybody would enjoy reading books with no pictures, or try to write things that weren’t assigned in class?

Children can be cruel, I suppose, but not Teddy; he was my best friend in those days. Both of us were seen as different: Teddy because, apart from being shy like me, he was from Italy, and spoke English with an accent and a lisp. But when the kids on the playground made fun of the strange, hesitant way he spoke, he would just shrug. I think it was because he didn’t really understand what they were saying… or care.

His mother had told him to smile if others laughed at him as if he, too, thought it was funny. It seemed to work most of the time, but sometimes if he saw the others making fun of me, he would intervene, and stand between the other kid and me. Teddy was tall for his age, and although he was thin, the mop of unruly black hair and determined look on his face was usually enough to diffuse the situation without saying a word.

“You always try to drown them in words they don’t understand, G…” he told me one day after he intervened for me when I tried to out-argue Kenny about the value of poetry. “I mean, not only do they not care about what you read, they actually find it fits nicely with the class joke about you.”

“You mean, the homo thing?” I asked and shrugged it off.

He smiled and nodded as if maybe I finally understood. They accused Teddy of the same thing and said that was why he and I were friends.

That hadn’t occurred to me before, but you don’t bring up things like that with your best friend. I mean we did all sorts of things together; Teddy lived in the house across the lane behind mine, so on most weekends, we would play hide-and-seek with others who lived nearby; we’d see who could climb the highest in the trees near the school, and in the winter we’d throw snowballs at the pudgy little Morley bus as it slid by on the icy road. We did most things together I think.

But was Teddy one of them: a poof, as I’d heard one of the guys in the class call him in the cloakroom behind the class in a loud angry whisper? I was sitting in a front row desk as usual, so I couldn’t really hear what happened after that, but Teddy walked out smiling and the other guy holding his nose as if he’d been punched.

I asked him about the confrontation as we were walking back home for lunch. We lived only 2 blocks from the school so it made sense to have soup and sandwiches at home rather than sandwiches from a lunch bag in the playground outside. Our mothers were good friends and so we often would trade houses so we could eat together.

“So, was it another homo thing, Teddy?”

He shook his head, and chuckled. “I’m the poof remember; you’re the homo…” And we both laughed and jostled each other as we walked.

I was bothered by the labels, and we found ourselves walking home slowly. “So… I mean are you really a…” I hesitated to ask Teddy, despite our deep and lasting friendship.

His smile widened. “A poof?” He considered the question for a moment. “Are you a homo…?” Clearly the labels didn’t bother him, and he shrugged, still smiling.

“I don’t know what I am, G. Back in my country it is okay to have close friends of either sex without people attaching labels to you. In some parts of the country, men sometimes even hold hands if they are good friends…”

I stared at him in disbelief for a moment.

“You are my best friend, G; I do not care what others think; neither does my mother… does yours?”

He was still smiling so I don’t think our mothers were worried. I thought about my mother for a moment though. “She thinks we’re good for each other; close friends are more valuable than money she always reminds me.”

He smiled, as enigmatic as ever. “So don’t worry about what others think, G. Keep on writing poetry -I’ll read it. That’s what friends are for…” Then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I -I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”

I recognized it in an instant: my favourite poem by Robert Frost. “How did you know that poem, Teddy?”

He just looked at me and winked. “You’re not the only one who writes poetry, G.” He stared into the distance for a few seconds and then said, “Maybe I’ll let you read some of mine sometime; that’s what real friends are for…”

Realizing that has made all the difference…

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