Where Are They Now?

When I was a young and impressionable primary schooler at Polk School, I had a friend named Tony who lived a few streets over. Tony is the star of a news update I posted last year about the boy who farted while doing sit-ups. He had a little sister a couple years younger who performed in every single school talent show by doing a dance routine to popular songs by Tiffany, like I Think We're Alone Now with her friend, Emily Beatty.

Tony was a little odd, and he had a particular hang-up on that pivotal friend activity: the sleepover. The one time he slept over at my house, it was in fifth grade and he was unable to sleep in a strange house. This was perfectly understandable even though I was out cold on the air mattress next to his, and he had his parents called up so they could take him home around 10 PM. I slept over at his house sometime later that year and we went to bed around 9 PM. Immediately after lights out, we started the usual chatter/goof-off routine that's tradition for every kind of sleepover. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and lurched around his room like I was a mummy, which he didn't find scary in the least bit although he acted more annoyed than anything else. Minutes later, he slipped out of his room and disappeared downstairs.

When he returned, he was accompanied by his parents who quietly pulled me aside and said, "Tony says you're bothering him and he really needs his sleep." The time? It was 9:04. Who goes to bed immediately at a sleepover? That was the last time I ever slept over, and as we moved into junior high, we drifted apart as young friends are wont to do. In seventh grade, he started hanging out with a different crowd and getting into fights at lunch, and after that -- well, I don't know what happened to him. He isn't in a single yearbook after 6th grade and I never heard from him again.

Where have the Tony's of the world disappeared to?