Sparky

It's a little cliche, like something from "Animal House", but everybody in my fraternity ended up with a nickname. If you were unlucky, your nick was derived from something stupid you did or survived. I drew "Chunk" because I threw up.....a lot. There was "Thud" which happened to be the sound one would hear when he would pass out. Some were saddled with names appropriate to their looks or personality like "Lurch" and "Useless".

Then there was Sparky.

I don't remember how Sparky got his nickname. He did a lot of stupid shit, but none of it involved fire or electricity. Sparky started out as the brightest of the group. Grades were a big deal when we were pledges and the first quarter at UT found Sparky at the top of our pledge class. It was all down hill from there.

Alcohol played a big part of it, but I felt like Sparky lost interest in bettering himself somewhere along the line. The first hint of real trouble was when he got arrested for public indecency. He and some girl were bumping nasties in the middle of a park when the police stumbled upon them mid coitus. Sparky, ever the gentleman, apparently jumped up and started running. I assume the girl did as well, we never did find out what happened to her. Anyway, Sparky, being drunk, ran until he was caught and got far enough from the scene of the crime that he couldn't remember where he had left his clothes. He was hauled to jail au natural and returned to us the next day in an orange Knox County jumpsuit.

Later in his academic career he was kicked out of a final because he was covered in his own vomit. Sparky had a theory that as long as you took the test in the same condition that you studied for the test, your performance would not suffer. Sparky studied drunk and tested drunk. He flunked out at the end of his sophomore year.

Sparky's last night at UT was spent with Guns and Roses. He would put on Sweet Child O' Mine and crank the stereo to eleven. Because it sounded better, he borrowed another housemates electric guitar and accompanied Slash........poorly. This was all done while inebriated and in the dark and over and over and over again. I still cringe every time I hear the opening bars to Sweet Child O' Mine.

We didn't hear from Sparky after he left school. It wasn't until almost ten years later that I ran into him. I had moved to a small town in West Tennessee and had a hankerin' for a pizza one night. Sparky delivered my pizza to me. A thirty-something year old drop out that had never really recovered from his half assed attempt at education. Sparky wanted to socialize, but I didn't think that would be prudent. What could we possibly have in common? Call it snobbery or elitism or whatever, but it was obvious to me that our paths had diverged in a way that made it impossible for the two of us to connect on any meaningful level. The short hand of our conversations would have sounded something like "Hey! Remember the time...."

I don't know what made me think about Sparky tonight. I only hope that somewhere Sparky has parked his pizza truck and is knocking back some cold ones while Sweet Child O' Mine is cranking on the stereo and I hope he doesn't think I'm a douche.