The Stories I Write

I’m forty-one and still write stories about the past. I want to capture the feelings I felt, then, and hold on to the preciousness of the moments made special by the people in them.

This is the Introduction to The Stories We Tell, a nostalgic lookback on friendship, growing up, and the hopes we have of becoming heroes.

It’s The Wonder Years meets The Sandlot with sprinklings of Friday Night Lights. New stories will be published weekly. For a list of all chapters, please visit the Chapter List here: Chapter List - The Stories We Tell.

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There’s a memory I think about often and a moment inside it I like to imagine. I tell myself it’s nothing important, or special, but that isn’t fair. Because here I am thirty years later still picturing it. Worse yet, writing about it. A sentimental writer really is the worst of things.

The memory is from a backyard wiffle ball game. The moment, from a smile during it. Four of us friends—Ryan, B, Mike, and Me—all ten years old playing in a small backyard in our small Ohio town. 

Home plate sits at the edge between my friend’s yard and his neighbors. Thirty yards out is the other neighbor’s fence, which became our home run wall the second it went up. To one side is their house and to the other a big yellow shed. Hulking near the fence is a giant tree with large branches that beat back our would-be home runs and a tree house about eight feet up inside it.  

A wooden slide runs out the tree house angling to the ground. Don’t ride it, though, unless you want your hands ripped by splinters and your butt to hurt. 

The calendar’s flipped from May to June. School is in our rearview and the sun is out as we zip around the still green grass. Sweat slides down our faces and drips off the backs of our knees. We rose early and have already played for hours, though it’s not lunchtime. It’s the type of morning that only exists in the summer when you’re young, when there’s no next thing to do and when moments seem like they last for days. 

Mike wiggles the yellow bat up above his head. B stands at second not paying attention. Ryan slings a pitch and wind whistles through the cuts in the plastic ball. Ryan drops his bat and pop—plastic smacks plastic—and the ball sails into the air, climbing into the sweet spot higher than the fence but lower than the tree’s big home run blocking arms. 

 “Lucky shot,” Ryan yells. “Never should have gone low and inside,” Mike barks back. I can still hear the smack when he and B high five and the thump his feet make stomping onto home.

He stops here for a moment, turns, and stares across the yard, marveling at his shot. A big smile breaks across his face. It’s a new season, and he’d just hit the first home run.

I smile whenever I picture this moment. It feels good to remember. 

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I’m forty-one years old and like to write stories about the past. My childhood ended a long time, but when I sit and look at an empty notebook the scenes I see play out are all from these days—a friend rounding second and sliding into third. Another standing in the end zone, arms raised, victorious in some backyard 10-yard fight game he created. Fireflies spark on summer nights while campfires burn on fall ones. Leaves change from green to red and the torn-up grass of an October football field is the only place in the world that matters. 

There’s a scene in Stand by Me I’ve never been able to escape. As the movie ends, and right as the music starts, the main character captures everything about the friendship we’ve just experienced: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” 

I was nine or ten the first time I watched Stand by Me. I remember staring at the screen as the end credits played, listening to that song while tears ran down my face. I watched it again and again, feeling a heaviness in my soul and a longing in my heart. 

In that moment, a part of me knew what life’s experiences have taught me since: There’s a preciousness to this time and these moments, a specialness to the people who lived them with you, and a fleetingness to all of it:

The sting in your palm from the high five of a friend. 

How pizza tasted better on Friday night with the lights off, a movie playing, and another week of school in the books. 

The chill that could crawl up your back on a Friday night, part from the metal bleacher and part from the nerves for the team on the field. 

A night of Nintendo. 

The wondering of what might play next on a mixtape. 

I’m forty-one and feel embarrassed because the stories I write seem, if not small, certainly set in small places and at times when life could feel smaller. Ashamed, too, because I’m still writing stories about the past, like the hazy glory days caught me and I never moved on or made my way out. I wonder why I don’t write about important things—business or politics, money or how to improve this, that, or something else in your life. I try to, sometimes, but other words always come out. 

The year Ryan and I cleared forty-eight inches tall was monumental. It meant we could tackle the big rides at Cedar Point. That summer, they unveiled the tallest, fastest, most daring coaster the world had ever seen, and we made a pact to ride it together. I’ll never forget Ryan’s words to me while we drove with our families to the park. “They say it’s the best. It’s the ultimate ride.”

We walked through row after row with the hot sun beating down on us and up from the concrete. The radio must have broken or jammed or something, because we only heard two things for three hours: the 4 Non Blondes singing What’s Going On and the screams of riders, some full of joy and others of terror. 

My heart raced, and my stomach turned. I said a little prayer I’d get sick to have an excuse not to ride. When we stepped onto the platform to get in our car several other kids and even some adults ran away, too scared to climb the big hill. I looked at Ryan hoping he felt what I felt and wanted to flee. He smiled, flicked his hand against my stomach, and whispered, “let’s f*****g go.” 

I’m sure there are better stories, they just aren’t the ones I write. 

I’m forty-one now and still writing stories about the past. I want to capture the feelings I felt, then, and hold on somehow to how quickly it came and went. Writing helps me to remember, to stay close to the people in these memories. Part of me is still that young kid crying through the credits of Stand by Me, overthinking life and friends, not wanting to let go of the preciousness of the moments made special by the people in them. 

I like to think there’s a lesson in courage somewhere in the roller coaster story. Maybe, though, on that summer day thirty some years ago, riding the world’s tallest and fastest ride with my best friend just felt awesome. And I want to remember it.

Maybe, that’s the point.