November, 1983

Our high school was named Cambria-Clearfield High School South. Our alma mater was very difficult to sing. There was also, as you probably guessed, a Cambria-Clearfield High School North. It had been built at the same time as South and, to save money on architectural fees, had the exact same layout. Same classrooms, same lockers, same stairwells. The only meaningful difference between the schools was that South's colors were red and blue, whereas North was the embodiment of evil.

At least, that's what I assumed based on the bitterness of the rivalry between our schools; a rivalry that came to a head every year at the Thanksgiving football game, an event that was so important that on the Wednesday before, we were all taken out of class and herded into the gym for a pep rally. It was as good an indicator as any of the school's priorities; after all, the football team was never dragged off of the field to cheer on our Mathletes.

To be fair, our classmates were generally happy, even enthusiastic, to be there. For some, it was just a welcome respite from the drudgery of learning pointless information that we strongly — and correctly — suspected we would never use again. Most of them, though, were legitimately swept up in the excitement, eager to cheer the team on to victory against the forces of darkness. (The mascot of the forces of darkness, in case you're wondering, was a bullfrog.)

But for me, there was so much to not care about that it was impossible to know where to start.

I didn't care about the sport of football generally. To this day, I've never seen an entire game, live or on TV. I never learned to throw a football. Hell, I never accepted that a football even qualified as a ball. Balls are round, people. This isn't rocket science.

I also didn't care about our football team specifically. The meatheads who alternated between threatening to punch me because I was a "brainiac" and demanding to copy my homework, for the exact same reason. All of which was based on the hilarious misconception that I actually did homework, which I generally did not. I had my own supply of brainiacs to copy from.

I didn't care about the school itself. It was a place that I was legally obligated to attend, and to the very limited extent that I applied myself, it was simply because that was the only way I could get into a college good enough to not have a fucking football team.

Obviously, I didn't care at all about the longstanding rivalry between our schools, but my fellow students hated their counterparts at CCHS-North. This enmity was encapsulated by a time-honored saying at my school: North sucks! It turned out, interestingly enough, that CCHS-North had a saying, too: South sucks! Which, my classmates all agreed, was not only mean-spirited, but made absolutely no sense.

And finally, I didn't care about the entire concept of "pep," which I defined as "what stupid people feel when they're happy."

I had a lot of strong opinions back then.

From my perch in the varnished retractable bleachers, I scanned the entrance for Tom and waved to him when he finally arrived. He gave me a goofy open-mouthed wave in return, then headed towards me, caricaturing the walks of the people in front of him, which never failed to make me laugh.

By this point in time, Tom and I were inseparable. After the pivotal trip to D.C., there was a transitional period where my new best friend Tom started spending more and more time at my house, while my old best friend Ricky was being slowly phased out. He was like a downsized auto factory worker, forced to train his own replacement in Bangalore on how to use a hydraulic drill press. Only in this instance, he was familiarizing Tom with the rules of the Rubicon household.

I'm a tremendous fan of my parents. They loved me, they cared for me and they were always there when I needed them (and also when I didn't). We are still very close to this day. But holy shit, man, they had a lot of rules.

Rules about noise and stains and seat belts and sweaters. About letting the dog out. About letting the cold in. About leaving the lights off. About leaving the stove on. About opening blinds. About shutting drawers. About being on time. About waiting your turn. About putting laundry in the hamper. About taking dishes out of the dishwasher. About speaking up. About talking back. About rolling your eyes. About greasy fingerprints on the glass table and muddy footprints on the hardwood floor. About using the phone, the microwave, the alarm, the stereo...

...and in a category all its own: the rules dealing with my father's car. It would have been easier to pass the Pennsylvania Bar Exam than it was to keep up with all the restrictions and obligations that went along with sitting in the back seat of his precious Mercedes.

It took a while for Tom to get the hang of it, but he adapted, and throughout high school, he was a regular fixture at our house. Tom frequently stayed for dinner on weekdays — a mixed blessing, since this was during my mother's alfalfa sprouts and veggie-burgers phase — and would sleep over on weekends, where we continued our tradition of talking and laughing late into the night.

My parents got used to having Tom around, and started treating him like one of their own, which meant that they would sometimes yell at him, too. Which, strangely, Tom actually seemed to enjoy. It made him feel like he belonged. Like someone cared.

I didn't really grasp it at the time, but Tom's home life was exceedingly sad. Tom's father had died when Tom was eight. His mother never really recovered from the loss. She meant well, but she was overwhelmed, anxious and frequently withdrawn. Tom also had an older sister. She was thoroughly unpleasant, referring to him as "the shit." And back then, that wasn't a compliment. Only rarely did we spend time at his house, and when we did he seemed both agitated and ashamed. His house was something to escape from; my house was an oasis.

Together, we'd play primitive video games and listen to comedy albums. And we'd watch R-rated sex comedies on cable, like Porky's — which featured horny teenagers spying on girls in the shower, as well as a rather incongruous subplot about the evils of antisemitism — and H.O.T.S. — which featured topless skydiving, strip football and Danny Bonaduce of The Partridge Family fame being sodomized by a harp seal. We spent countless hours exploring my father's Playboy Magazine collection, with its fascinating mélange of sophisticated articles, weighty interviews, and vaginas.

Of course, it wasn't always just the two of us in isolation. We would hang out with friends at arcades, bowling alleys, malls and movie theaters. But there was definitely the sense that we were a duo, the Aaron & Tom Show. There was us. And there was everybody else.

Now, in our Junior year, we were finishing each others' sentences or, more disturbingly, saying the exact same things at the exact same time. We're talking complete sentences. There would even be occasions when one of us would say something and even we didn't know which of us it was.

Tom was short and stocky, with blue eyes and straight sandy-blonde hair. I was brown-eyed with a curly brown Jewfro and I towered over him thanks to a recent growth spurt. Yet people constantly confused us for one another. It felt sometimes like we had a blended identity. And honestly, I thought that was pretty cool.

(Continued...)