It all started when Bill and Van Walker were invited to the same birthday party.

Later in life, Bill couldn't remember the name of the lucky boy (he assumed it had been a boy), but he did remember that the icing on the cake was the sugariest thing he had ever tasted in his first seven years. He also remembered roller-skating at the party. He remembered the roller rink, how the room was rectangular, and how, as he circled (ovaled?) the room, he would have one long distance followed by one short distance, followed again by another long distance and another short distance, finally arriving back at the beginning after all four sides had been passed. And he remembered always crashing into the corners after the short sides, as if the side was too short to give him enough time to make the proper turn. Now, as he considered both the party and his roller-skating style, he assumed that his corner-crashing had more to do with the fun of crashing and falling down than inadequate turning space.

He remembered eating French fries, the really soggy kind, soggy even before immersing them in sweet ketchup. He remembered eating too much, and feeling a little ill. It was possibly the first time in his life he felt that ill from eating too much. At age seven, he had no idea what an ulcer was, or that he would get one fourteen years later. How could he possibly imagine what his life would be like two more lifetimes away? Twenty-one was going to be such a surprise! He would eventually learn, disappointing as it was, that too many French fries would upset his stomach. But not at the nameless boy's birthday party. Not on the day he thought he had found the secret to life.

After a few hours of roller-skating, playing video games, and eating too many French fries, it was time to sit by the birthday boy, and watch him open his presents. Later in life, Bill realized that this was bad party design, or bad party etiquette, and he credited it to whomever the first parents of the first child who had such a birthday party. When the presents were opened at the party, all the other kids would become jealous and/or greedy. They'd beg their parents for similar gifts, and when the parents would suggest that they "wait for your next birthday, dear," the saddened child would return to school only to watch the birthday boy rise to stardom. Now the recipient, and not the giver of the gift, was the king of the hill. Now the recipient had the toy to beat all toys. He was popular, and as nice as it was for Johnny or Susie or whomever to give the gift in the first place, niceness was not considered a virtue amongst seven-year-olds.

Bad design or not, it was 'present time' at this party. Some children dreaded this moment, because a child was judged by his peers at 'present time.' A gift had to be unique, thoughtful, the right price, something the birthday child didn't already own, and something that no one else at the party was also giving. The last was the hardest to handle, since there was really no way of knowing what other children would bring as gifts. This year, Bill brought three Star Wars action figures for the birthday boy. As he recalled the story, he continued to struggle with the gender of the birthday person. In retrospect, he hoped it had been a boy's birthday. He remembered quite clearly the action figures (Han Solo, Chewbacca and Darth Vader), and at age seven, no boy would consider giving a girl such a present. If he wanted, Bill could attribute social dysfunction later in life to the fact that he had allegedly given action figures to a girl. But he was fairly certain it had been a boy's party. And therefore, action figures were generally a safe gift. Lots of kids traded action figures - if you had two Han Solos, you could swap one to a friend for a Boba Fett and a Storm Trooper, for example. A Han Solo was a popular item, so if you wanted to acquire one from a friend, you would have to be willing to give up more than just one other figure, most likely. It's rather astounding how seven-year-old children could conceive of such a trading system, especially when one considers that an identical system is used today in professional sports, and it takes agents and managers and contracts and lawyers to trade one starting pitcher for three minor league prospects.

He watched carefully as the birthday boy opened the presents. One by one, each gift was released from its shiny paper casing, the bows dotted the floor by the Pac-Man game in the corner. Earlier in the day, eight-year-old Tony Peach had set the high score on that Pac-Man machine at 185,050. Tony became popular for about three minutes after his brilliant work, but then the roller-skating D.J. announced that it was a girl's choice skate. None of the girls asked Tony, since girls were not generally impressed with Pac-Man scores. In his deep chasm of depression, Tony ate an entire roll of Butter Rum Life Savers, and shortly thereafter, threw up in the boy's room, and someone had to call his mother to come get him.

The presents continued. Debbie Richards gave him a hat. The look on the birthday boy's mother's face clearly said that she didn't like her son to wear hats. But the birthday boy himself was pleased. It's possible that the birthday boy had a crush on Debbie Richards. They had skated together during the girl's choice. Ethan Stately also had a crush on Debbie Richards, but she didn't like Ethan. Ethan's nose always seemed to be runny, which is a turn-off, even for a seven-year-old girl. Also, Ethan's claim to fame around the school the year before (in first grade) was that he ate gravel. Every day, when the bus would park outside the schoolhouse, and let all the kids off, they'd all run (screaming) toward their classroom. Ethan would stop, however, just before the walkway to the building. Covering the ground between the bus and the front door of the school was a path of gravel. Ethan tried to impress Lisa Holden by eating the gravel. She laughed, but wasn't impressed. Ethan was stubborn, though, and continued to use the gravel ploy to get girls. Ethan was at the birthday party, too, and was watching Debbie Richards. Debbie had never seen him eat gravel before. But Debbie was smitten with the birthday boy, anyway. Ethan got so depressed that he stole back his gift (which was three packages of bubble gum), and chewed it all.

The next few gifts were uneventful. Then the birthday boy picked up a wide box. It was a frisbee, and it was from Tony Peach, the boy who had scored 185,050 on Pac-Man. Tony was smart to have gotten sick, because a frisbee was a lousy gift. Any seven-year-old already had a frisbee, and it was clear that this birthday boy was not above being rude to the givers of lousy gifts. Tony should thank his lucky stars that he wasn't there to receive the abuse he would have gotten.

But the next gift was the one that made the difference. The next gift was the one that gave Bill the secret to life. The next gift was Van Walker's gift. Bill watched intently as the birthday boy picked up Van's gift. It was small and flat. It was too small (lengthwise) to be a book, and too small (heightwise) to be a box. What was it? The birthday boy opened the paper carefully, realizing how thin, and therefore delicate, the gift was. At the time, no one knew it was Van's gift, but Van was probably smiling smugly. He knew that his gift would be the most popular one of all. Looking back, Bill decided that Van was kind of a snot. The birthday boy peeled back the paper, and discovered the greatest gift anyone had ever seen. Money.

Van had wrapped twenty one-dollar bills, and given it as a gift. To a seven-year-old boy! A boy who will forever remain nameless! But now this nameless boy (faceless, too, come to think of it) had twenty dollars. The birthday boy turned seven at that party (or maybe the day after). It was 1980. Or maybe 1981. At that time, twenty dollars would last forever. Actually, had the rude faceless nameless boy invested his twenty dollars in something like Microsoft, it probably would have lasted forever. Instead, he bought twenty dollars worth of candy, and was popular at school for the next two weeks. Then he was miserable. After giving the candy to his classmates, the parents of the classmates called the parents of the birthday boy, and suggested that he stop feeding their children such crap. The parents of the birthday boy scolded the birthday boy. (It was two weeks after the birthday, or at least, after the party, and that seems a reasonable enough period of time before scolding the child again. After all, it's not his birthday anymore.) And the birthday boy ran out of candy anyway. Kids are so fickle.

Although Bill's Star Wars action figures had been a successful gift (they were opened before Van's gift, and therefore they didn't have as far to measure up; nonetheless, they were still forgotten, like every other gift, when the twenty dollars appeared), it was Van who stole the show. Once it was announced that he had given the twenty dollars, every boy at the party (girls, too, he imagined) wanted to invite Van to their upcoming birthdays. A seven-year-old's social life sometime revolved around the next birthday party.

Bill loved Star Wars. He had all the action figures. He played with them frequently, bringing several to school from time to time. Other kids in his class had some of the figures, so they could all play together during their Free Play time (a block of time in the afternoon when kids could just be social for a bit). Bill even had extra figures (backup Storm Troopers and such, along with an extra Luke Skywalker and an extra Darth Vader, for security's sake), so if someone else wanted to play, he could share. He was really quite thoughtful in that respect. The nameless boy apparently did enjoy his Star Wars action figures. One day during play time, he and Bill played together with them. Van Walker was there, and wanted to play, but didn't have any action figures. Since he was the most popular kid in school at the time, Bill and the nameless boy would have bent over backward for him. So Bill gave him one of his backup Storm Troopers. Gave it to him! Not on loan, but a gift from one seven-year-old to another. It wasn't Bill's best Storm Trooper. It was the first one he got, though. In the early days of his action figure collection, he carried them around loose in his little knapsack. Also running loose in the knapsack were crayons and other stray objects. After just a week of this haphazard system, Bill had to revamp his packing routine. His red crayon met with the Storm Trooper in his bag one day, and some of the crayon got stuck in the Storm Trooper's hip joint. Bill tried to clean it out, but had limited success. And he couldn't wash it out, because a crayon is made of wax, and thus impervious to water. Bill didn't understand why water didn't work, but he learned that crayons could get wet and not ruined.

Van Walker didn't mind the red crayon. And he was a rough player with the action figures. When he played, he meant business. During the course of their simulated fighting, Bill's Darth Vader got into a bad fight with Van's Storm Trooper. This was a little bit strange to Bill, since he knew (in his ultimate Star Wars wisdom) that the Storm Troopers and Darth Vader were all part of the Dark Side, and would never be fighting one another. But with an opportunity to play anything with Van Walker, Bill wasn't about to let a minor detail like the Dark Side interfere with the action. So the fight went on. During the battle, Darth Vader managed to somehow cut off the Storm Trooper's arm. Now that Bill was no longer the owner of the toy, he could announce such damage against it. When he told Van that his light saber had cut off the Storm Troopers arm, he half expected an argument. But Van shrugged, and yanked the arm off the toy. Bill was shocked, but impressed. Van Walker deserved to be the most popular kid in school. He was incredible! Such poise, such willingness to lose an arm in battle. What a warrior.

Star Wars action figures were the first logical gift to give at any birthday party. At least, to boys. He knew better than to give them to girls. Actually, he didn't go to any girls' birthday parties. He was always shy around girls. This gave him a label as being a loser, but he preferred to be a loser by not doing something potentially good than be a loser by definitely doing something particularly stupid. At times he even thought that the only reason he got invited to birthday parties was because the children didn't make their own invitation lists. Their parents did. But he realized that that was possibly incorrect, because on his birthday, he would make his own list. His parents had to approve it, but he still made his own.

The roller-skating party had been in September. Bill's birthday was in June. June was a bad month for little kids to have birthdays. June was a social void. School got out in early June, and day camp never started until July. So there were two weeks in June when there was no element of forced social interaction. In order to spend time with anyone besides his parents, he would have to call his friends, invite them over, and have something useful to do. His birthday party was really the only thing he could pull off during this time. He planned for months for his party. Bill, like most of the kids, tried to stay (or become) friends with the kids who had given good presents. That way, at his birthday party, he'd get similarly good presents. This was especially true with Van Walker.

By October, Van Walker was the most popular kid in school. By December, no one asked him anymore about whether or not he was a car. By February, he had been invited to thirteen more birthdays. Bill had not been invited to all of those birthdays (perhaps the Star Wars action figures had not been forgotten after all, and perhaps they were not as well-liked as Bill had hoped), so he had limited knowledge of Van's gift routine. At one other party, Van stayed true to his repuation, and gave the birthday boy twenty dollars. At Debbie Richards' birthday, Van gave her twenty-five dollars. This was enough to lure her away from the boy who had his party at the roller-skating rink. Seven-year-old Van Walker now enjoyed Debbie Richards' company at lunch. Bill gave Debbie a paint-by-number kit. His mother had picked it out, since Bill had no idea what to get a girl, and Debbie Richards was the first girl to ever invite Bill to a birthday party. The picture inside was supposedly a cat. But he would never know, and neither would Debbie Richards. Debbie never bothered to paint the cat. She thanked Bill for the gift, and even wrote him a nice thank-you note. But he knew that she never opened it. Because at Fred Baxter's (or was it Fred Badger?) birthday, she gave him the same gift. He thought it was a little strange, because why would a boy want to do a paint-by-number kit? That was a girl gift. But he thanked Debbie Richards anyway. Bill was at that party, and saw the paint-by-number kit. Later, he asked Debbie where she got it, and Debbie began to cry. Bill was never invited to another of Debbie Richards' birthday parties again.

After Bill made Debbie Richards cry, and after she told Van Walker how Bill made her cry, Van Walker was determined not to be Bill's friend anymore. It didn't really matter that they were never friends in the first place. Bill had tried so hard for months to win Van's friendship. After all, Van was originally a loser, because people would ask him, 'what are you, a car?', and Bill was a loser because he wasn't very extroverted around girls. While in some instances, losers will bond together and become each other's only friend, in this instance that was not the case. For one, Van shed his loser image by giving money as birthday presents. And the other reason was that Bill had not shed his loser image at all.

But now, Van Walker had reason to dislike Bill. He didn't talk to Bill. He didn't pick Bill for the kick-ball teams during P.E. class. He didn't sit with Bill at lunchtimes (during those few lunches when he didn't sit with Debbie Richards either). Nonetheless, in mid-June, Bill's parents helped Bill select a convenient Saturday for his party, and when Bill was making a list of the kids he would invite, he included Van Walker. He invited a lot of people, but he made double-sure to include Van Walker.

Little kids center their birthdays on events. Adults go to a bar. College students go to a party (where they invariably smoke pot, or get too drunk, or both, and they end up puking a lot, much like Tony Peach did when he was eight, even though alcohol-induced sickness is entirely different from Life Savers-induced sickness). High school kids - well, Bill didn't really know what high school kids did, since he didn't have any birthday parties in high school. In junior high school, it was slumber parties. This was the first time parents would intentionally let their kid stay at someone else's house for an evening. A boy's slumber party would probably involve movies, a lot of junk food, some kind of athletic activity (basketball, perhaps), and then staying up until 1:00 a.m. discussing the cuteness of different girls. And in elementary school, kids had event parties. Roller-skating, swimming (either a pool or a lake; lakes would raise a kid's status level tremendously), or boating, for a few examples. Bill had his party at a candlepin bowling alley.

Most kids are bad bowlers. While it's fun (sometimes) to be a bad roller-skater, it's never fun to be a bad bowler. So when twenty seven-year-old children go bowling, more than likely, there will be some tears shed. Hopefully, the star of the birthday bowling party will be the birthday child himself. At least, he hopes that he will not be the worst bowler there. Bill's mind was far from bowling, however. He was focused on what he would do with twenty dollars from Van Walker. But present time wouldn't be until the end of the party, so Bill (and everyone else) would have to wait until they'd all bowled for a while before they could get to the presents.

First, it is important to explain candlepin bowling. Most people outside of New England have never heard of this ridiculous perversion of bowling. The balls are smaller than standard ten-pin balls. A candlepin ball is about the size of a grapefruit. Each player gets to roll three balls per frame (as opposed to the customary two balls per frame in ten-pin bowling), the ball is perfectly spherical (or it should be), and instead of holes for the fingers, it has three little nicks where the holes would be, were it a ten-pin ball. The three nicks are useless, except in an attempt at ten-pin imitative vanity. Anyone with a hand large enough to hold the ball has a hand too big for the nicks to line up with anything in particular. If someone with really small hands goes candlepin bowling, he ends up holding the ball with both hands, and rolling it Rick Barry style down the alley. (Rick Barry was a professional basketball player in the 1970s who was famous in part due to his unorthodox method of shooting foul shots. Most players shoot foul shots like any normal shot - the ball is held above the head, the shot is attempted. Rick Barry held the ball in both hands, and tossed it up toward the hoop underhanded. This style is sometimes called 'grandma style,' usually by one child in an effort to upset another child. Rick Barry, however, has the highest lifetime foul shot percentage of any professional basketball player in history.) Bill's sisters used to bowl this way. In fact, they did so until they were too old to go bowling with "the family" anymore.

The pins are thin, resembling a can of Pringles Potato Crisps more than a standard bowling pin. The pins are a bit wider at their center than at the ends, so it's a distorted Pringles can, if anything. But the pins are symmetrical. One end is no different from the other end. Surely, this made life easier for the folks who build the mysterious contraptions at the far end of the alley, those mechanical things, which manage to set up ten new pins every time the button is pushed. First a little gate would swing down, sweeping away the pins that had fallen (also knocking down any pins still standing, of course). The gate would also have some slogan on it. Usually it was an advertisement for either a major product, like Pepsi or Toyota, or for a product no one had ever heard of, like Arthur's Frozen Meat Popsicles or Jack's Gas & Coffee Bar. Bill and his friends were amused by the ad for Jack's Gas & Coffee Bar. They parsed the title to imply that Jack's Bar would serve either coffee or gas. It was very amusing to consider gas being served in a porcelain mug, especially since to a seven-year-old, 'gas' has less to do with fueling cars and more to do with what happens after eating too many beans. It was equally amusing (although on a much more disgusting level) to imagine coffee present where bean-related gas once was. Upon learning that their gas of choice differed from gasoline (which was what Jack was actually advertising), they still found it amusing, although less so, to imagine coffee coming out of those spouts at the gas station. A seven-year-old might notice that his parents use coffee as a fuel substance, why couldn't a car?

These gates were the sort of device that would fascinate a young cat, and young child isn't much different from a young cat. Bill, for example, was riveted. He'd sometimes just push the button even when nothing had happened yet, just to watch the gates move. The button was another issue. After completing a frame, the person who had just finished his turn was responsible for resetting the alley for the next bowler. The button was for this purpose. Failure to push the button after a turn would result in humiliation. Kids looked for any opportunity to humiliate other kids. At such an early age, it was about who would claim "alpha" status within the group. Since Bill loved to push the button, or rather, he loved to see the mechanisms move after pushing the button, he never forgot to do so after his turns.

The group of bowlers assembled for Bill's birthday party was an odd bunch. The list included: the nameless birthday boy (to whom Bill had given three Star Wars action figures), Ethan Stately (who ate gravel as a pick-up routine), Laura Bore (who, later in life, would suffer the agony - or perhaps convenience - of having a last name that rhymed with what she did for a profession), Tania Patterson (who, junior year of high school, asked Bill to the prom, and then senior year, accidentally spit water on him just before graduation), Jimmy Anderson (who had nothing particularly memorable about him, good or bad), Patrick Relay (whose name was similar, but not identical, to famous professional basketball player and coach Pat Riley), and many others. Tania Patterson's father played in a bowling league at this particular alley on Saturdays.

Another man on Tania's father's bowling team was Mr. Zola, the strange older man who lived across the street from Bill's old house. Bill had last seen Mr. Zola sometime during the summer after his fifth birthday, so about two years had gone by. Bill, having heard no legitimate reason to disbelieve the story about Mr. Zola killing little boys, saw Mr. Zola and really flipped out. After a moment of shock, he relaxed, realizing that the bowling alley was pretty crowded. His parents were there (even though they didn't believe the story, Bill figured that if Mr. Zola tried to do anything to him, they'd no doubt intervene), and after all, it was his birthday. Everything was supposed to go his way.

Most things did go his way that day. Tony Peach had not been invited to the party, and as a result Bill had no serious challengers for the highest score on that particular Pac-Man game. It seemed that every child-event locale had its own Pac-Man game. Tony Peach had set the high scores on most of them. But on this day, Bill had that status, as he scored 65,800. This was far inferior to some of Tony Peach's best scores, and Bill himself had actually done better in the past. But he was content with his high score for the day on Pac-Man. He did not, however, achieve the best score in bowling. Ethan Stately surprised everyone by rolling a 72 in his first game, and then became temporarily popular by beating that score with an 81 in his third game. They played three games each, except for Laura Bore, who only played two. After scoring an 11 in the first game and a 9 in the second game (despite the fact that Bill's mother repeatedly stretched the rules by allowing Laura Bore the opportunity to roll as many as eight balls in some frames), she was so fed up with 'the stupidest dumbest game ever,' that she sat on the stairs in the back, watching from a distance. She also snuck behind the snack bar when the attendant wasn't looking, and drank two cups of coffee, with six Sweet-And-Lows in each cup. Bill scored a 51 in his first game, which was the second highest (after Ethan Stately's 72), and a 40 in the second game. Because it was his birthday, he decided to be weird on the third game. He bowled with the wrong hand, or backwards, or while reciting limericks. He did this for the first seven frames, and it was no surprise that his score was a dismal 13 through that much. On the seventh frame, while reciting 'There once was a man from Nantucket' - the "adult" version - his mother scolded him, and as part of his pouting routine, he bowled normally for the last three frames, knocking down another 23 pins in those three alone. His score of 36 was decent enough, and the 23 in the last three frames was more than Patrick Relay had in the third game in total (his score was 22). It was also more than Laura Bore had gotten in the first two games combined, but when Bill mentioned that to her, she threw non-dairy creamer in his face. Bill spent the next ten minutes pretending he had some rare skin disease, and just as he was about to pretend to inflict it upon Mr. Zola (as payback for eating small children during the many years since losing his finger), his mother caught him again and brushed the creamer off his face.

After the third game, it was time to open presents. Bill had nearly forgotten this part of the ceremony. Everyone gathered around as Bill went through the gifts. One by one, he unwrapped various toys and trinkets, pens and crayons, books and games. One child gave him two goldfish in a plastic bag. Bill's mother took the fish away quickly. Even though Bill later wrote a thank-you note for the fish, he never actually saw them again. Bill had glanced at the present pile early on, but hadn't been able to locate a small flat package he hoped would be from Van Walker. But he figured that it was probably buried under the other larger presents. As the pile grew smaller, there seemed to be no flat money-shaped package. He looked over the group of kids, and noticed then, for the first time, that Van Walker wasn't there. The next gift he picked up had a note with it. He read it to himself, "Happy Birthday, Billy," it said.

If there was one thing he hated at this point in his life, it was to be called Billy. Nothing upset him more. Not being beating in bowling, not throwing up at recess, not being sent to bed at the ridiculously early hour of 7:00 p.m. as a result of not finishing his vegetables at dinner. Nothing at all bothered him the way being called Billy bothered him. And everyone knew it. In first grade, Bill had hit another boy who called him Billy, which swiftly led to a parent-teacher conference the next night. Bill didn't hit people after that, but he did make it well known that he was to be called Bill. Not William, not Will, not Willy and certainly not Billy. Ugh! What an awful name, Billy!

So when he read the card, he hated Van Walker. Van certainly knew. And even though Bill was only seven, something in his mind told him that this was a result of giving Debbie Richards a paint-by-number for her birthday. So he hated Debbie Richards. And when he opened Van's package, it wasn't twenty dollars. It wasn't even one dollar. It was a Star Wars action figure. It was a Storm Trooper. It wasn't new. It was an old one. One arm was missing. And a few small chunks of red crayon were wedged in the crevice that was his hip joint. Bill looked around again for Van Walker, and couldn't find him. His mother asked if he was there, but no one knew what had happened to him.

Bill had spent nine months waiting to cash in on the secret to life. Inviting Van Walker to birthdays was going to be his financial freedom forever. Instead, his nine months ended in disappointment. Van Walker had given him no money, no friendship, and not even a real present.

"You'll see him in school in September, Bill," his mother said.

But his mother was wrong. Van Walker's family moved to Illinois that July, and no one saw him again for years.