The Deodorant Classic of '95

My mom watched Cannon for us today so I took him over to her house early on my way to work. Being my usual non-observant self, I backed out of her driveway without even looking. By the time I was in the road and looked over a car was basically about to t-bone my car; luckily the person saw me in time and had slowed down. I pulled out and saw that it was Brandon Clough, one of my best friends during my middle school years and who lived just two doors down from me growing up.

I called Brandon right then and we chatted for a second, nothing big. Funny how you stay in great touch with some friends and lose touch with others. Anyways (I'm rambling), the whole way to work I was thinking about some of our classic times in the early teen years.

During my middle school years Brandon and I hung out a lot with Shawn Olsen, Gerry, and DJ McCarty. Mostly all I can remember now is that we played basketball during the day and either Risk or Monopoly at night (Gerry usually won at risk, as anybody can tell you he is a conniving sucker when it comes to that game). Anyways, we all slept over at each other's houses frequently since we'd be up late playing the video games or the games mentioned above. One other common theme of us hanging out was somehow Brandon and I would always get into these wrestling/fighting matches, sometimes pretty heated. To be clear, these fights would end and we'd be cool with each other again pretty much immediately. I never remember fighting with him when just the two of hung out (well, ok, once he shot me in the leg point blank with a bb-gun, so I wasn't too happy about that), it was more of a result of Gerry or Shawn somehow getting into our heads that we were aginst each other, and egging it on until we finally went to blows. I remember frequent battles both outside on one of our courts or late at night inside, roughing up somebody's house.

One particular night will never be forgotten. I'm sure if Shawn, Gerry, or DJ read the title of this post they would know immediately what I'm referring to. I'm pretty sure they were all there but I know for sure that they know the title of this epic battle. We were sleeping over at Gerry's house like any other random night and they were egging us on to start fighting as usual. Obviously this was great entertainment for them, but it's quite clear now that it was amusing for the two of us as well as we were always suckered into it. For some reason Brandon had brought his own pillow up to Gerry's to sleep on, and at some point during the evening he moved it and a stick of deodorant fell out of it. I took the bait immediately, jabbing something to the effect of, "What type of fairy brings deodorant to a sleepover?!" We all got a good laugh out of it, except Brandon of course. No more encouragement was needed from the other boys, the fight was on.

I can't remember a more intense fight than this one. You would have to be able to visualize Gerry's family room but we wrestled around and punched each other for quite a while. Somehow we moved over to a corner beneath a little table where the phone was and Brandon started banging my head into the wall. There was also a little office chair in this corner, which he proceeded to bang against my head as well. I scrapped for a minute and flipped over onto my stomach trying to get out of this corner, when suddenly out of nowhere Brandon whips out his deodorant and screams, "YOU WANNA MAKE FUN OF MY DEODORANT!!!!!" and started hammering me in the back with his deodorant! I was laughing so hard I couldn't even feel him hitting me, which only infuriated him more. You can imagine the other boys eating up the high comedy.

Somehow the fight ended and we went to sleep, but it was big news the next day for any friends who weren't there to be eye witnesses. It was soon to be immortalized as the "Deodorant Classic of '95", the most epic of our many battles that year. Good times with the Clough.