They Grow Up So Fast

The last, heady days of high school in Colorado Springs. The weather was warm, we had all picked our colleges and purchased the requisite apparel, proudly advertising our school of choice. Our homework had dwindled to a trickle-nominal things that merely punctuated our drifts in and out of the school building, like commas in a long run-on sentence. We spent a lot of time in each other's backyards, strumming on guitars, eating ice cream, talking about the adventures that surely awaited us when we arrived as freshmen in a few months. Graduation day wasn't as climactic as graduation season itself.


Somewhere in graduation season, the idea occurred to me, the result of some long conversation some warm spring night, to give my friend Jessica a graduation gift. Not a monogrammed Bible, not an envelope of cash, not an address book so she could keep in touch with us and always remember to STAY SWEET! BFF! No, I drove down to the south of town and purchased the last duckling for sale in the whole city. He was a white-crested duck. He looked something like the hatted duck in this photo:

I took the duckling in his box, with feed, of course, to Jessica's house. Although I had warned her family, Jessica was surprised, which was just how I planned it. We christened the duck Homer, in tribute to a movie that had affirmed our nerdiness and provided hours of entertainment, much of it having to do with our physics class.

Homer, it turned out, was a girl. She taught herself how to throw herself up the stairs of the front porch, crouching as much as she could and then hurdling up like a fluffy cannonball and landing on her belly on the next step. She lived in the backyard kiddie pool or in the bathtub. She went on walks. She exercised her quack. She maintained the fluff atop her head with pride. She was a good duck.

We all went off to college-I to California and Jessica to Pennsylvania. Homer stayed home and paddled around the kiddie pool. The next time I heard of Homer, I learned that, lo and behold, she had attained her 15 minutes of fame, picture published in the Gazette, had even showed up in court.

Jessica' mother had sold Homer to her yoga instructor, who had provided Homer with a loving and caring home. The neighbors, however, were not terribly fond of the new pet, and claimed that the duck, and her quack in particular, was a nuisance and should be forcibly removed from the neighborhood. The spat went to court. Homer won.

Homer's new owner, celebrating her court victory and Homer's 15 minutes of fame, threw Homer a sangria party. The invitations pictured Homer wearing a red party hat. Jessica and I were so proud.

Jessica's since gotten her Masters and lived in Mexico, moved to Chicago and fallen in love. She's getting married next week, and I'll be there. There are some friends you just feel like you *live* with, no matter how far apart you've gotten or where you've moved, some ceremonies we have to go to because we've crissed and crossed in and out of each other's lives so regularly, with such unexpected joy and coincidence, that there must be something real to this friendship. Some friendships are solidified by a trip to the Turkish baths (you know who you are), or a night in a haunted Sri Lankan hotel, and some, by a white crested duck.