My Life In Pink

Mettadore: The Duckie Years

I was recently treated to what is probably one of the best pictures of me that I’ve ever seen. And it was taken by one of the most unlikely people. It’s amazing because it’s one of those pictures that fills in the words. It’s one picture, and it nearly perfectly describes me toward the end of high school. I really was that happy, fun-loving geeky kid you see in the picture- the one who thought that Duckie Dale was probably Hollywood’s most underdeveloped character, ever. I was that kid who thought the coolest shirt in the world was one exposing the merits of early 20th century literature.

I was a geek. I was basically an “outgoing, laugh a lot, friendly and happy in a puppy sort of way” playful geek, but I was still a geek.

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. I mean high school sucked, right? Well, maybe not for you, but it certainly did for me. I was that guy who played Dungeons and Dragons and who wore strange clothing like pinned pants and old army coats. Sure, I acted like that wooden box I carried around had terribly important- and secret- papers in it,¹ but that was just a ruse.

I was a geek, plain and simple.

Now, you have to remember that this was the mid- to late-1980s. This is pre-Microsoft, folks. I mean, sure, today’s geeks have corporate headhunters from Google sniffing them out and offering them 6 figure signing bonuses because they can program recursive search algorithms in their sleep. Today’s geeks find easy riches and glory because they can figure out how to relieve race conditions in the Big Kernel Lock while eating their breakfast. Today’s geeks have it easy.

Classes? There weren’t even functions! We had to program up stream both ways

Back in my day, in my inner-city high school with its PASCAL programming class, we had no such luck. Back in my day, we didn’t have Warcraft and Halo- we had to get by with TI99 4/a computers, with Commodore Vic 20s. We had to program our procedural butts UP the data stream. Classes? There weren’t even functions! We didn’t have reusable code! We had to program up stream both ways- AND DAG-NABBIT, WE HAD TO LIKE IT!

Eh hem. Anyway, back in “The Day,” being a geek wasn’t exactly the road to riches that it is today. Life was hard back then. I was a geek who couldn’t get a date to save his life. Seriously, that’s only barely hyperbole. I actually asked the two most unpopular, ugly girls² out on dates. These were the girls that were unfortunate enough to repeatedly show up at dances with their siblings! I thought “They’re nice, that’s more important than looks anyway.” Nope. Both of them turned me down! One of them, after not having dates for about 2 years before that, suddenly had a boyfriend.

Okay, so we’ve established that I was a geek, and a lonely geek. Why the laughter in the picture? Why the fun loving personality? Two words: Suzanne Londsdale.

Seriously, if you had a class with Suzanne Londsdale, you’d have been happy too. Hell, even the opportunity to pass her in the hallway could turn your early morning fight about cleaning your room into a laughable event.

When Van Morrison sang about sailing off into the mystic, he was singing about Suzanne Londsdale.

There’s a lot that can be said about Suzanne. She was that girl who made you fret for the entire week over what shirt you were going to wear on Thursday because that was the day that she walks by your locker at 9:15 between chemistry and algebra. She was the main reason (actually, you’re a boy, she’s basically the only reason) that you brave the black mildewed floor of the gymnasium and actually take a shower on every second Tuesday. She was the subject of at least half of the poems you wrote- you know, those ones that you carry in a big wooden box pretending that they are secret CIA documents?

Of course, it’s high school. Every one of us has one of these high school obsessions, and none of this description does justice to what Suzanne Londsdale represented to me. To put it in language of the time: When Van Morrison sang about sailing off into the mystic, he was singing about Suzanne Londsdale.

So what did Suzanne have to do with me? Well, nothing actually. And with good reason.

Let’s start with the Duckie Dale referrence. There actually was a significant period of my high school career during which I assumed that any given gorgeous, intelligent, red-headed girl would naturally fall head over heals for Duckie Dale. Never mind that it didn’t actually happen in the movie- it was supposed to happen, and that’s all that matters. So, as any intelligent, gifted, determined high school boy would do, I began to try to re-create myself as the Buffalo, New York version of Duckie. Of course, the name “Duckie” was already taken- and using the name from a movie would be lame- so I chose another name.

I told my friends that they should call me Cricket.

I know, huh? Cricket. And it’s worse than that, actually. That was a shortened version of my true, full, amazingly cute, any girl will immediately fall in love with me name: Moon Cricket.

My chosen nickname, my way to woo girls, my method of recreating myself as the epitomy of cool, was actually to call myself Moon Cricket.

No, that’s not a typo. You read that right. Moon Cricket. My chosen nickname, my way to woo girls, my method of recreating myself as the epitomy of cool, was actually to call myself Moon Cricket. The fact that Suzanne Londsdale had nothing to do with me is a solid testement to unconscious instinct and to the very concept of natural selection itself. Think of it. After considerable thought involving months of careful planning, reams of paper filled with prose and poetry, consultation with many people including at least 2 girls, I’m sure- I actually decided that the epitomy of cute and cool combined was Moon Cricket.

To this day, I wish that high school was actually a 4 year period of time during which I was abducted by aliens who experimented on me in heinously invasive ways. This, I realize in my later years, would offer significantly less embarrasement.

So, as proof of natural selection, Suzanne Londsdale ignored both me and my new nickname. Well, actually, Suzanne ignored me and pretty much everyone ignored my new nickname. I mean, really, who picks their own nickname? Dorks do. My very best friend tried for a couple days, but it eventually just died, as did “Drood,” “Mika,” “The Animal” and a host of other nicknames I tried to institute as a replacement for “John.”

But I digress. We were talking about the happy, fun-loving side of the boy in the picture. The boy with the notably Duckie Dale-like hat and the literary shirt. Someone snapped a picture of this boy and, eventually, sent that picture along. I can’t possibly telegraph it any more so I’ll just come right out and say that the photographer was Suzanne Londsdale.

It’s hillarious to think of it now, especially after we’re both married, pushing 40 and like so many people have reconnected on Facebook. Part of the humor of it is that I was this geeky kid who liked to program computers, write silly short stories, wear funny hats and laugh a lot. But most of the humor is that I’m this guy pushing 40 who likes to program computers, write silly short stories, wear funny hats and laugh a lot.

Better than Molly Ringwald!

Seeing pictures of myself in high school is very strange because I think “Man, I’ve changed so much since then. Two branches of the military, war, college, grad school, marriage- I’m a completely different person”. But then I see this picture and realize that I’m not. A part of me, perhaps most of me, is the same person. I’m still that geeky kid whose quick with a smile and who thinks, despite all evidence to the contrary, that “Moon Cricket” is a cute nickname. I’ve grown and changed, but most of me is the same.

And that’s a positive thought. Because back in high school, I didn’t just act like someone, I became someone. I decided that there was someone that I wanted to be and damn the consequences. I decided to get past all the family hardships, all of life’s trouble and focus on being who I wanted to be. I can say that I did it to woo Suzanne Londsdale, but really I did it to woo myself.

And it worked. I didn’t get Suzanne, or Joanne, or any number of a string of women I tried to betroth. But I got one, the best one yet, and she loves me specifically because I’m still that geeky, fun-loving boy in the picture. LIke anyone, I forget sometimes. I forget and I focus on work or money problems, just like I focused on home or school problems back then, but the core part of me wears funny hats and laughs a lot just like I did in high school. That’s a pretty comforting thought.

Thank you Suzanne.

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1. Poetry actually, and some short stories [↩]
2. Disclaimer: I don’t remember them now, but they were probably “ugly” according to the standards of the time, meaning: “Basically as attractive as anyone else, but picked on for no apparent reason.” [↩]