Memory Wipe
Part 1
What you’re about to read might make you uncomfortable. Morals will be called into question. But wouldn’t you want to change someone for the better if presented with the chance?
You can call me Matty. All my friends do. It’s only slightly more mature than Mathew, which is what my mother insists on calling me, regardless of how many birthdays I’ve celebrated now. It’s been thirty-two, by the way. Still calls me Mathew like I’m eight and possibly in trouble.
Matty came about when I was in seventh grade. Allow me to regale you with the story and then you’ll be caught up on the characters of this tale.
Since kindergarten, I’ve had the same group of friends. The four of us grew up in the same area—close enough to ride our bikes to each other’s houses after school. We went to the same schools until we graduated high school. Dan, John, Mark, and I were thick as thieves.
In the seventh grade, there was a new family that moved to town from the UK somewhere. They had a son the same age as me and the boys. When I tell you he was awkward, I need you to picture the most uncoordinated, pale, possibly malnourished from lack of direct sunlight or maybe a raging case of rickets human your imagination can conjure. But with the quickest, most devastatingly sarcastic wit on a person any of us had ever seen at that point. And with what amounted to the most exotic accent we’d come across in our short lives.
Small town America doesn’t get many British imports. It was a big deal.
It was a culture shock for Tom too. Not just because he spent the first year with a chronic sunburn while he adjusted to life with more than three days of sunlight per year. The first few months in America were offensive to Tom’s delicate British sensibilities. At least, that’s what it looked like to us. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to move to a new country where you speak the same language and still struggle to understand the locals while also trying to navigate puberty.
Really, it’s a miracle that Tom is friends with us. We were dicks to him when he first showed up. Kids can be savage, especially in groups, and the four of us were always together. Mark was especially predatory when it came to Tom. You see, Mark was the aggressive one of the group before Tom ever showed up. He’s always been a complete and utter asshole. We put up with it because he had a rougher home life than the rest of us, but as we got older, his savagery grew with him. He mostly focused his rage on people outside our group and Tom was definitely outside our group when he first moved to town.
Mark especially focused on Tom’s awkward clumsiness when he first arrived. Tom was in the middle of a growth spurt at the time. His feet looked like they were three sizes too big for the rest of his body. It made any kind of athletic endeavor a nightmare for him and entertainment for the rest of us. Contrasted with Mark’s seemingly innate athletic ability, the difference was stark.
Tom seemed to be able to let Mark’s insults slide, but that’s eventually how Tom came to refer to us as Marky Mark and his funky bunch, because “Mark’s insults would age as well as his namesake’s music.” The other three of us understood what a devastating affront that was to Mark’s intellect, but he was only concerned with the nickname “Marky” sticking. In an effort to deflect, he gave us all similar nicknames, i.e. Dan became Danny, John turned to Johnny, and I became Matty.
It never stuck for Dan and John, but I was happy to have a nickname because even at that age, I detested my mother calling me Mathew. As boys will do, we inevitably befriended Tom after we learned he couldn’t be intimidated. And our friend group expanded to include the British kid with a possible vitamin deficiency. Tom did eventually grow a functioning human body, if anyone was wondering. He’s the tallest one of our group and even entertained the idea of being a professional soccer player before he went off to college. The kid who possibly had rickets turned into a dominant force of nature on the soccer field. I think Mark is still convinced Tom somehow willed his body to grow into the exact opposite of every offensive comment Mark made about him when we were kids.
We’re still friends today. We all live in the same city, all within twenty minutes of each other. John is married with one kid and another on the way, Dan is engaged. Tom and I have long-term girlfriends, and Mark is a serial dater. Even our significant others are friends. They kind of have to be, as we spend so much time together.
So, now you know all the players of this little tale. Our dynamic hasn’t changed much since reaching adulthood. We hang out all the time, we do stupid shit together, we roast each other, we consider each other brothers at this point. And Mark is still the asshole problem child of the group.