We Called Him Buster
Hey Junaay!! Hey Junaay!!!I could hear the familiar sound of his voice calling me from up the street. I remember his loud laugh and the stomping of his feet when he would run down the street. I remember the way he gave "five - seemingly in slow motion which was in contrast to the aggressive slapping and gripping of your hand that most of us use to do.
He lived directly across from me on Rockrose Ave. His home the last of the 2800 block and mine the first of the 2900 block. I grew up good friends with him and his younger brother, Kevin. Although he was four years older than me, we connected on the same level as I did with Kevin.
When Kevin called me one recent morning. I thought it was odd that he called so early. When I asked how he was doing, he responded in a way I knew something was wrong. My first thought was maybe it was something regarding his mom who is in her nineties now. But to my shock, he informed me Buster had passed. In our culture, our nicknames are so impactful, we sometimes forget we all have "government" names. His was William.
We can go years with seeing childhood friends just sparingly, but knowing they have made their transition brings a level of thoughtfulness that you would feel if we saw them daily. I spoke to him about a year ago when he called me out of the blue. I last saw him in 2016 and he asked if I remembered smashing his ice cream he had just got from the Good Humor truck when we were kids. Yes, I remembered. It was a Strawberry Shortcake ice cream. I made it a flat cake. I really didn't see it when he placed it on the chair. My bad, bro.
Growing up, we would converse about girls, music, sports and clothes. At Buster's funeral, he was remembered as a dedicated dad with one of the memories being of him walking his son across the baseball field after a James Mosher Little League game. I had forgotten that most of our neighborhood were big baseball fans. When we would play against other neighborhoods - Rockrose vs Park Heights -he would take the game so seriously. I recall how he would take his time at bat, slowly getting in his stance that he copied from Hall of Famer, Rod Carew. You would have thought, we were getting paid for this.
His sudden passing bought about a mini-reunion with neighborhood friends I had not seen in a very long time. Ironically, time and the protective masks on some of their faces could not prevent me from recognizing who they were. It made me think about the laughter and good times from a period of our lives that seemed so simple. Rest in power big bro.