The first time I saw “Apple Juice” he was swinging from a well-worn rope around the neighborhood water hole.   Actually, he wasn’t quite “swinging” – he’d already swung.

Close by I was intently trying to get to 17 on my skipping stone goal.

I probably would never have noticed him.

Probably, except he bobbed back up in the path between a solid skip 12 and 13.

“Dink”

“Oops”,… well, at first “oops”….  Then BAWWAHHA HA-HA-HA-HA… for some reason I couldn’t stop myself.   I mean, really;  what are the odds?

“what’s the best you ever did” ?    Said the chicken skinny fellow rubbing the back of his head.   “Sixteen – Well, not counting dribbles”  I replied.

For the next two hours I had a skipping stone buddy – and a skipping stone contest filled with “oh yeah’s”.

We decided the next day we would return with our baseball card doubles and see if any were worth a trade.   After a few more rounds of skipping contest we took leave to Old Man Brennan’s fence for the baseball thesis.

I should have known something seriously Karmic was afoot when we both dropped Spiderman Pez dispensers on the ground as we pulled the doubles from the depths of our pockets.   Along with the customary lint, buttons, a few stones, a metal bit of something that looked cool, some bazooka joe cartoon wrappers and almost identical bottle caps n stuff…

AJ said instead of dopey ‘pick card trading’,  or worse yet the blind Indian trading version,  we should line up our doubles on Brennan’s fence and each try to flick a card at the other persons lineup.   Uh,… Ohhhkay.

So we each proudly lined up the cards on one of the little crevices belonging to the 2nd post from the top.   Then we switched sides, and the rudimentary principle was:  you stood back 20 paces, then flicked a card at the fence, if you knocked one down – you kept it.

Sounds basically easy right?

HECK NO.   It’s tough – real tough.    Our flicked cards were everywhere, but the fence cards, the doubles, stood there staring at us; and I swear with each miss their tongues began to stick out.

After about round six.  I said “this is ridiculous” (but probably said ‘stupid’).   “We’re never gonna hit one, let’s quit”.

That’s when something really “swell” happened.   This kid my age, with the same Pez dispenser, and same bottle caps -who also believed Atom Ant was the strongest superhero character; I mean c’mon I was solo with Atom Ant until that moment- said:

“if we quit, we’re losers.”  “I ain’t never gonna be no loser – so I ain’t quittin'”.

And he never did.   EVER.

A few summers later we were losing a sandlot baseball game 14-3, and AJ was up third in the batting rotation at the bottom of the ninth.    Screaming from the banyan tree which also served as a shaded dugout, AJ demanded first man up and second man up get on base so he could win the game.

“Win the GAME” ? I said while thinking free Nehi was more probable than that chance.

AJ blasted me.

“Yeah“, he shouted “I planning on batting twice in this inning and that’ll mean we win” 15-14″. 

“So all you gotta do to win this game is get me to bat twice, see”?

And he commenced shouting at #1 and #2 to do their part – and ONLY their part.

In essence he was saying quit worrying about the stuff you can’t fix and fix the part you can – YOU.

“if we quit, we we’re losers.”  and AJ “ain’t never gonna be no loser – so he ain’t quittin'”.

Believe it or not, that simple message rubs off.    There’s an entire Apollo mission saved because of that spirit of ‘no quit’, Apollo #13.

Sometime around 8th Grade AJ and I began making blood oaths and super-secret pacts of loyalty.   I can’t remember when it started, I just remember hours and hours of questions and answers – back and forth.

The principle was that we would never let the other down.

To affirm the strength of our pledge somehow an odd, almost game-like, competition developed.

Every question began with:

“what if”

It was the ultimate car riding game, except we were never riding in a car.

“What if”… you were held in a Chinese prison camp as they pulled off a toenail each day and demanded you swear you are not my friend”?   What would you do ?

“What if”… they held you dangling over a big ole razor blade that ended in a pool of salt”?   “Would you deny you knew me”?

“what if” became the greeting to every encounter as we spent time thinking of more bizarre and gross ways to test friendship and/or loyalty.

The best “what if’s” came to mind when you least expected it.

Some of them were brilliant, but some of them we couldn’t remember if a few days passed and we finally got together again.

The teen years brought increasing morality and other priorities into the game:

“What if Kelly O’Mally refused to kiss you, unless you said you liked her better”?

Girls ?   Typical.  Or at least as typical as a non-matriculated hormone encumbered boy could think they be.

“What if the only way you could have kids was to promise never to talk to me”?

Of course the answers were always the same.   “Nope”.   “Wouldn’t matter”… etc.

At some unknown time, “what if”, evolved again as a way to tell about something you were thinking of doing…..

When AJ was going to buy the Mustang he said “what if, I actually did buy that car“…  Immediately I knew he was serious.

When AJ was getting married he began the conversation “what if I were thinking about asking ____ to marry me?“… Immediately I grasped the gravity of this woman’s planet upon him.

There are other times when it’s seriously used:

“Hey man, what if I were to tell you I was standing behind bars right now?”

Immediately you know THIS IS THAT ONE PHONE CALL you watched on so many of those tv shows.

Before the spoken sentence is finished you are already working the bail angles in your mind.    You see, beyond the “what if” is the reality that it joins with:

  “if we quit, (on each other) were losers.”  “We ain’t never gonna be no losers – so we don’t quit on each other”.

“EVER”

If you need to walk out of the job you love because the boss won’t let you drive to Las Vegas to bail out your ideologically minded Cherry-Flavored Pez cohort,  you quit the job.

You quit the job because you don’t quit friendship

…..and there ARE other jobs.

There are also MORE serious times when it’s used.

Like the time I called and said:

“Hey brother, WHAT IF, I were to tell you my wife has cancer”?

This was immediately followed by six months residency with a man who took unpaid leave, and walked in the front door exactly 13 hours after the call, having completed a 12 hour drive.

His wife even took a 2nd job so his commitment to “what if” remained uncompromised.

“Hey now, this is just what we do right?” he’d say.

“What was all before, if not preparation for“?  <—  Would most certainly be in the mix….

….And highly visible during the eulogy as he stood next to a trembling voice, ready to take over the words if the task became too daunting.

Despite eleventy thousand differing versions…. We never thought of that “what if”.

Which brings us to this weekend.

The phone rings around midnight Saturday.   I answer, yet silence.

Silence.

Silence?

Midnight……. who?……. only a few… but this feels like….

… “AJ”?

“That you”?

The barely coherent response:

“what if”…..