Losing the Lost Boys

“Can we go, Peter?”
“Please, Peter, can we go?”
“If you wish it.”

At the end of every Peter Pan story ever told, Wendy and her brothers determine that they want to go home to their mother. Peter warns them that doing so will force them to stay away from Neverland forever, but the appeal is so great that even the Lost Boys, Peter’s gang, decide to leave with the Darlings and grow up.

The story usually ends in a happy way, Peter escorts Wendy and the boys back to London, gives a cheerful goodbye and returns to Neverland with Tink. But what happens when he gets back? Well, obviously he goes back to riding the wind’s back and to fighting Indians and pirates, but he does so alone for all his friends, Toodles, Nibbs, Curley, Slightly, the twins, they’ve all deserted him—to grow up.

“I can see what’s happening…”
“What?!”
“…and they don’t have a CLUE…”
“Who?!”
“…they’ll fall in love, and here’s the bottom line: our trio’s down to two.”
“Oh.”

Ty, Dustin and I have wondered for a long time, which of us will be the first to get married, and the more and more time he spends with Kiley, the more and more clear it becomes that Dustin will be the first of us to leave Neverland. And you’re probably thinking, “Well at least you still have Ty.” And as far as killing pirates and fighting Indians is concerned, its true. But Ty and I are very different in how we approach life and dating and in how our minds process the way life sometimes falls short of one’s expectations for it, but Dustin and I are very much the same in those aspects.

“One girl is worth more than twenty boys.”
“You really think so?”
“I live with boys.”

When a bro finds a girl that he has sincere feelings for, he loses all sense of broish propriety. Calls from her are now more important than Xbox with the guys, an evening with her is more valuable than a dozen BCS football games, and he doesn’t care if his bros are uneasy when he puts his arm around her, because his relationship with her has a potential unequaled, besides he knows that his relationship with the bros will endure even if he treats them like dirt—after all, they’re his bros.

I say all this as a statement of fact, not as an accusation of Dustin’s guilt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s NOT guilty of doing these things, I’m just saying that within the circles of brodom, a bro who choses a girl over his guys is not held accountable for his actions. When Ty was dating Lisa he acted the same way, and when I someday find someone worth dating, I’ll act that way too. And although bro’s complain about it, they understand that that’s just how it is and they accept it.

“Go on. Go back and grow up. But I’m warning you, once you’ve grown up you can never come back. NEVER!.”

That being the case, it often doesn’t seem like much of a loss when you see a twitterpated bro leaves the league of extraordinary gentlemen to join the ranks of the lawfully wedded, because as his courtship with her blossoms into marriage, his bro-age with you withers into acquaintanceship.

“Tinkerbell… I hereby banish you forever!”
“Oh, Peter, not forever.”
“Well… for a week then.”

And when you can feel your bro moving you to second fiddle, you feel like doing the same back to him. After all, isn’t reciprocation an important aspect in a healthy relationship? So the easiest and safest thing (emotionally speaking) would be to simply write off the friendship. And with many roommates, doing so is no big deal.

“You’ve left out one of the chief characters, ‘Samwise the Brave.’ I want to hear more about Sam. Frodo wouldn’t have got far without him.”

But every once in a while you make a friend with whom you’ve either gone through unforgettable times, or connected with on so many levels that you both know that the bond of your friendship cannot be undone by any measure of situational neglect, or circumstantial distancing.

“Don’t leave us, Peter, and don’t say good bye.”
“What’s good bye?”
“It’s leaving that’s what it is: forgetting about us all over again.”
“You’re all my lost boys, I’ll never forget you.”

I’ve seen many of my best friends get married, but being distanced from those friends came from such things as moving away to college or going on missions. I haven’t roomed with Dustin since april of last year, but to tell you the truth, we’ve become closer now that I live 31 miles away than we ever were living just one wall apart. So, until now, I’ve never had a best friendship end its peak with the best friend getting married, but I’m pretty sure that’s how my story with D$ will end. Nothing’s official yet, so I can’t use words like engaged, or ring, but I know that’s what’s about to happen and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.

“And in all my troubles past and all my troubles yet to come, I’ll never find a better friend.”

If I was ever stressing out about a girl I liked, or ever annoyed by a girl who liked me, or ever was struggling with a decision I was trying to make in my life, Dustin would not only listen, but he would have the perfect reply to either resolve my problem or at least ease my anxiety, because without fail, he had previously and often recently experienced the same situation, or the same concern.

And that’s what we do—we talk. Some friendships are based on enjoying similar activities, maybe you like to play ball together, or maybe you both enjoy John Wu movies, but Dustin and can be doing nothing, and still have a blast. He and I are so much the same, that we can counsel together and it’s like having a conversation with myself, only the self I’m talking to isn’t all stressed out so he can think clearly and give the kind of wise counsel a person would want for himself.

“Hey, do you wanna come with us?”
“You mean it?”
“No, not you… him.”
“Wait a second. Why him? I built this field. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me… I wanna know what’s out there. I wanna see it.”
“But you’re not invited.”
“Not invited? What do you mean I’m not invited? That’s my corn out there! You guys are guests in my corn!”
“Ray…”
“No, wait. I have done everything I’ve been asked to do. I didn’t understand it, but I’ve done it, and I haven’t once asked ‘what’s in it for me?’!”
“What are you saying, Ray?”
“I’m saying, ‘What’s in it for me?”
“Is that why you did this? For you? I think you’d better stay here, Ray.”

I don’t know how Dustin got so lucky as to have his name called at this time—I mean, just a handful of months ago, “marriage” didn’t even seem real. And as happy as I am to see that my all-time bro, D$, has “wound up with the chick of his choice,” I can’t help but wish I “was invited” to go too. I don’t know why the good Lord chooses to bring certain blessings to certain people at certain times in their lives, but I know Dustin, and I know Kiley, and I know that for each other they are “the right [people], in the right place, at the right time” and I’m confident that my time will come, but I'm a little impatient about it happening.

“Boy, I sure wish it would happen to me.”
“Yeah, I do too.”

Don’t mistake me for one of those poor folk who do nothing but dream of true love and wallow in self pitty until they get what they want—I’m having too much fun being a kid to be like that, but looking on at Dustin and Kiley, seeing what they’ve found in each other, I see the kind of relationship I hope to have someday.

“Peter Pan had countless joys that other children could never know, but he was looking at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.”
“To live… would be an awfully big adventure.”

Maybe it’s true that “all children grow up, except one.” And perhaps that one is me. It wouldn’t surprise me. Sometimes I’m convinced that I’m just too wonderful to belong to anyone—it’s “part of the riddle of [my] being.” But I don’t want to make this all about me, because MY BRO IS GETTING MARRIED! I can’t tell you how shocked that statement makes me, nor how pleased.

“Ray. Ray. Listen to me, Ray. Listen to me. There IS something out there, Ray. And if I have the courage to go through with this, what a story it will make…”
“What, you’re gonna write about it?”
“You bet I’ll write about it.”
“You’re gonna write about it.”
“That’s what I do.”
“Good. Good… I want a full description!”

Dustin was the one who started me on this blog-writing business. He had been doing it for months before he convinced me to start one of my own. And, dude, if you’re reading this, I just want to say congratulations. You picked a good one. I can’t believe it—you’re about to enter a world that, until now, we had figured to be fictitious. I can’t come with you, so I want you to report back to me, and I want you to say that it’s worth enduring whatever it takes to get there.

And, bro, I know that being serious with a girl doesn't mean you're engaged, and being engaged doesn't mean you're married, and being married doens't mean we'll no longer be friends, but it does mean a casting change for the roles we play in each others lives, so I just want to say thanks for giving me an oscar-worthy performance and good luck on your next film.