Growing up is scary stuff. Most of the memories of my childhood seem to be draped in a curtain… Growing up is scary stuff. Most of the memories of my childhood seem to be draped in a curtain of dread. Possible threats loom over all of my idle times — destroying anthills in my driveway, neighbors’ dogs waiting to tear me limb from limb, kidnappers lurking behind the willow trees in my yard, every plane overhead possibly Saddam Hussein dropping the big one on McClellandtown. As an only child, it was tough to face these formidable adversaries alone, which is why I was lucky to always have Bill around.

Bill wasn’t a perfect friend. My parents would invariably roll their eyes whenever I would ask — for the third night in a row — if we could set an extra place at the table for him at dinner, even though he never ate much. He never had any good toys to share with me — he was sort of a freeloader in that regard.

And whenever we got into something over our heads — like the time we spilled a bucket of paint all over the living room floor — he didn’t really back me up. He would just seem to magically disappear.

But he was never too busy for me. He was always just waiting to head out for a long day of catching fireflies or sidewalk-chalk drawing; he was up for anything. He was fearless — it was always he who insisted that we just had to go to the top of Death Hill when we went sledding, no matter how many jagger patches were along the trail.

He would challenge me like that, but he still seemed to always want to do the same stuff as I did — when I was too cold to continue anymore, he would start wanting hot chocolate from my mom at that exact second. And, of course, the hot chocolate afterward was the whole point of sled riding anyway.

He never minded being “It” when we played hide-and-seek in my grandfather’s Christmas tree field next to my house. He would play hard, but was never, ever able to beat me in basketball. Or run-down. Or anything, really. Which, of course, is great for a growing boy’s ego.

It just always seemed to get dark too early, especially when the summers ended. But we never went down without a fight, always kicking and screaming until the end for my mom to let us stay out just five more minutes.

As time went on, though, something happened to Bill and me. He had never exactly been Mr. Popular, which was fine. But after a while, I started to realize that it made me look uncool to be seen talking to him. I had always had other friends, but as I entered junior high, I started relying on them more and more. They had more in common with me — they went to my school, they had houses that I could stay over at (unlike Bill), and they knew everything about girls. Some of them even knew people who had kissed them.

That was the world I wanted to be in. All Bill seemed to be interested in was creek-wading. I began to get tired of exploring the woods around my house and stopped — after all, in a few years, I would be getting a car. And then the world would be my oyster.

Bill and I stopped talking. Well, I stopped talking to him. And before I knew it, he was gone. Easy as that. We just had gone our separate ways. I was fine without him. I had soccer, more normal friends and boy-girl parties on Friday nights — sometimes my parents even let me practice driving on the way there.

Some nights, however, as I pulled my car into the driveway of my house and walked to my front door, I could almost swear that I could still see Bill, waiting for me by the door, covered head-to-toe in mud and ready to go put slugs on Molly Newman’s trampoline. But it was always just my eyes playing tricks on me.

It was a Friday night early during my freshman year of college. It was hard to get adjusted, and I didn’t really have anywhere to go — I missed my friends at home too much. But they were all busy with their own lives and college experiences now. And so I did something I swore I’d never do. I called Bill to come out and play. And for the first time in my life, Bill said no. I guess he eventually had to move on, as well.

Like Saint Paul, when I became a man, I put aside childish things. I just now sometimes wish I hadn’t been in such a damn hurry to become one. It cost me the best friend I’ll ever have. And I don’t think I can ever fully get him back. Sometimes I wish I could just get five more minutes.

E-mail Daron Christopher (and Bill) at [email protected].