Strong Allies

Trolljohn and Freshman Goth Kid

"Some clients cannot make friends because they don"t know how. Others have either a Physically Displeasing Characteristic or a Mentally Displeasing characteristic.

A Physically Displeasing Characteristic can be all sorts of things: a bad smell, an ugly haircut, a neck brace, weird shoes, or anything that turns people off when they see it. Note that a lot of PDC"s are not choices. Start a conversation with a PDC kid and half the time you"ll discover poverty, illness, parental neglect, or a single mother with two semesters of beauty school credits. It may seem like the solution is to change the PDC. This is not always so. Unless the client actually asks for help, try, instead, finding somebody who you think wouldn"t mind the PDC.

A Mentally Displeasing Characteristic is usually a lot harder, but the principle is the same. You can play it straight and match an angry kid with an angry kid, a spacey kid with a spacey kid, etc, or try to mix them. You are almost never going to be able to change an MDC. Get creative instead."

The first person I met on my pilgrimage was Freshman Goth Kid (real name: Megan O"Rourke). I wasn"t actually sure if she was goth or emo or what, but she was wearing a black uniform polo and black uniform pants, so she had to be something. She was sitting on a step stool in the stacks, flipping through an older looking paperback book.

"What are you reading?" I asked her.

Megan lit the hell up. I could tell immediately that she"d been waiting ages for someone in this unnecessarily large school to be nice to her. Kids like her made this job worth doing.

She showed me the book. "It"s about monsters," she said.

I handed her a card. She smiled. Girls have always liked me for some reason. I tried not to use my powers for evil, but I wasn"t above using them for friend matching. All for the greater good.

"Sure," she said. "Wait, you mean now?"

"Yeah," I said. "Come on."

I approached two other people, but they politely declined. I kept moving. Some people thought I was brave for regularly trying to talk to strangers, but it didn"t feel especially brave because approaching people didn"t scare me. People just didn"t feel very real to me sometimes, so their disapproval didn"t feel real, either. If one didn"t like me, there were a thousand more to try.

The only other person I got to come with me was Trolljohn (real name: John Kiefer). He was hanging out in the computer cluster, not really working on anything, just playing Minesweeper with this sort of fake casual expression on. I waited until he had finished his game to address him.

"I almost beat that game on hard once," I told him. "Got to the very last two squares, but there was no way to know which one was a mine. So I guessed wrong. Kind of lost interest after that."

He nodded. "Yeah, that"s lame when that happens," he said. "Ninety-eight mines wasted."

"It"s kind of like the ninety-nine lost sheep," said Carly. "It doesn"t matter if you have all the other ones if you don"t have the whole flock."

He looked at Carly blankly.

"I"m Carly Bode," she said. "And this is Phil MacDonald."

"Megan," said Megan.

"I know," said Trolljohn. "You have nametags on."

"Feels unnatural though, not introducing yourself out loud before eating together," I said. And I handed him a card.

He looked more surprised than pleased.

"What?" he said after reading the card. "Why?"

I shrugged. "I like to meet people."

Trolljohn eyed me critically. Boys could be tough. They tended to be spooked by my aggressive uncoolness. You would think people without friends would have nothing to lose, so it shouldn"t matter if they hung out with someone uncool, but try telling a fourteen year old boy that.

But I had two secret weapons on my side. One, I had two girls with me. The other was my old standby advantage. I called it FOBSO: Fear of Being Seen Alone. And it was the only reason half the people who sat with me ever sat with me at all.

"This ought to be good," he said, but he followed us down to the cafeteria anyway.

There were no empty tables left, so we settled for the west edge of a table near the window, the other side of which was taken up by some friendly looking freshmen. There was still half an hour left of lunch, plenty of time. I settled into the background to eat my chicken chunks and observe.

"So what"s with the cards?" said Megan. "Is this some weird tradition?"

"It"s a pity thing," said Trolljohn. "Dude saw us in the library at lunch and figured, oh, right, we must not have any friends."

I didn"t bother to correct him. He was here, after all.

"Well, fair enough, I don"t yet," said Megan. "I"ve only been here a week. Why, do you have a bunch of invisible friends we can"t see?"

"My friends are all in a different lunch," said Trolljohn.

"A likely story," said Megan.

"It"s not that unlikely," said Carly. "If each friend has a one in three chance of being in this lunch, and John has two friends, there"s a four in nine chance neither of them are in this lunch period. The odds go down with each additional friend though."

"You like math?" said Megan.

Carly smiled. "I love it. I"m in the ninety fifth percentile. I was home schooled for grade school, so we didn"t really get grades, but we had to take a special exam every year."

"Why did your parents send you to regular high school?" she asked.

"Mom didn"t feel like she could teach much higher than eighth grade,"said Carly. "We aren"t religious nuts or anything. My parents just believe kids should get to run around and play more than they get to in regular school."

"This must be weird for you then," said Megan.

"It is!" said Carly. "I love it though! I got tired of seeing just my brother and sister all the time."

"Religious nuts never think they"re religious nuts," said Trolljohn. "I bet you had all sorts of weird s**t happen growing up that you didn"t even realize."

Carly put her hand to her mouth.

"You have a problem with swearing?" said Trolljohn.

It was clear to me that she did, but didn"t want to get too confrontational about it. "I"m just not used to it," she finally said.

"Think I"m going to hell?" he said.

I couldn"t tell if he was teasing her in a nice way or a mean way. It felt like a test.

Carly blushed. "I don"t know who"s going to hell. Nobody knows but God. And no, that doesn"t make me a religious nut, John. I"m just a regular Catholic. You"re at a Catholic school. Get over it."

"No worries," said Trolljohn. "You"ll get over that eventually. They all do."

Carly clenched her fists but said nothing.

"Well good," said Megan. "Maybe you"ll get over being a jerk."

"Nope," said Trolljohn. "Jerk for life."

"Well that"s a ridiculous thing to be proud of," said Megan.

"What"s your deal anyway?" Trolljohn asked Megan, turning his attention to her. "So you"re a goth chick, but your parents won"t let you get any piercings or tattoos or dye your hair?"

"No," said Megan. "I love that you think you know me based on the color of my shirt though."

This was no good. Trolljohn was going to ruin my whole operation if I didn"t rein him in somehow. But if I called him out, he"d just turn his negativity on me.

"Let"s everybody calm down," I said.

This was the wrong thing to say.

"Oh, thanks, Dad. So he gets to be a huge troll and you want me to calm down?" said Megan.

"I said everybody," I said.

"Fighting is a normal human action," said Megan.

"I wasn"t trying to fight with you," said Trolljohn. "I"m just making observations and guesses. I must have touched a nerve though. Why do you wear black if you don"t like people thinking you"re goth? I mean," he turned to Carly, "isn"t that the first thing you thought?"

"I don"t know why she"s wearing black," said Carly. "Maybe someone she loved just died."

"Let"s not speculate anymore," I said. "Megan, is there a reason you wore black today?"

"Not really," she said. "I just thought it might look cool."

"There you have it," I said.

"You though," said Trolljohn to me. "I haven"t figured you out yet. So you have some kind of Best Friends Club?"

I wasn"t phased by Trolljohn. Some people come quietly when you reach out to them, but others manage to take it personally no matter how gently you tread. They"ll take what you offer in the end, but they"re not going to act grateful or anything. If anything I felt more sorry for the tough guys than the shy ones. A tough guy is usually just a shy guy who got yelled at for having feelings one too many times.

"I help people find friends," I said.

"Like a matchmaker?" said Megan.

"Sometimes."

"Well," she said. "are you going to, like, send us on friend dates? Or is this it? Because I"m not being friends with him," she said, indicating Trolljohn.

"When I find someone I think you might like, I"ll introduce you," I said.

"You do a lot of this then?" said Megan.

"Yeah. Not always straight matching, but, you know, people sit with me sometimes. Everyone is welcome here," I said.

"I"d come back tomorrow," said Megan.

"How about you, John?" I asked.

Trolljohn gave me a weird look, as if to say, "What? I"m still invited back after I personally insulted everyone in this group?"

But then he recovered enough to smirk at me. "I"ll check my schedule."