The Groomsmen Essays: Dario Plazas, Planeswalker (Or, Not Entering the High School Battlefield Tapped)

I’m getting married on June 27th, 2015. Over the next two months, I’ll be sharing the stories of how I met my groomsmen in short, personal essays. What they've taught me, how they've changed me, and why they’re so dear to my heart.

There’s an awkward transition period that occurs when moving from school to school, graduating from one grade level to the next. And those shifts always tend to happen during the summers between Elementary School and Grade School, Grade School and Junior High, Junior High and High School.

It’s a magical time when you have off from school, and have plenty of long days to get introspective and reinvent yourself. Chances are you didn't get too deep in your thinking between Elementary and Grade School. I know I didn’t. I was far too obsessed with playing Super Nintendo and counting my Magic the Gathering cards.

It was the summer between Junior High and High School that I spent a lot of time thinking, and a lot of time with a Planeswalker * named Dario Plazas.

* In Magic: The Gathering, a Planeswalker is a powerful mage who is able to travel across the planes of existence. There are infinite worlds across the Multiverse, and Planeswalkers are unique in their ability to move from one world to the next, expanding their knowledge and power through the experiences they collect there.

See, Junior High hadn't been easy. I got pushed down flights of stairs, kicked around in the hallways, got into fights during gym class, punched in the school yard… all by kids just one year above me. I went to school in an astonishingly diverse environment and it was bizarre to me, even now, that I was getting kicked around for being brown and adopted.

I mean, who does that?

As a result, I spent a lot of time asking why, and being afraid of what the answer was. When you’re a young teenager trying to figure out who you are, having a bunch of people that seemingly hate you for who you are… well, that’s one way to screw with coming to terms with your identity. Especially as an adopted person, when dealing with identity is a tough thing in the first place.

I didn't talk to anyone about this. I bottled it up, and I let myself explode when kids messed with me. I wasn't just afraid to talk about how I felt… I was afraid of how I felt. The following year, free of the bullies, I was happy and made a ton of friends, but as the summer grew closer, with high school looming, I started to panic again.

All I could think about was how they would be waiting for me.

It was going to start all over again.

Luckily, the time between Junior High and High School brought with it something our schools called Summer Enrichment. Basically, it was like camp, but you went to school during the summer, complete with the terrible lunches, tedious projects meant to pass the time, and friends you’d probably only talk to that summer, and later let fade away.

That last bit though… that was a cliche that I broke. Because of Dario.

During the first week of Summer Enrichment, I showed up with my saxophone, ready to audition for the (summer) school band. I was seated in second chair with... yup, Dario. We swapped awkward small talk, about the schools we had gone to (different ones), the friends we had in common (none), the high school we were bound for (the same one!), and the like.

I quickly discovered that Dario happened to live just a few blocks away from me, and our parents decided that destiny had intervened, and a carpool was born. We mixed it up a bit too, walking home occasionally, sometimes joined by other neighborhood kids we discovered in our program. But for the most part, it was the two of us, taking the long walk across the city, lugging our saxophones and backpacks, talking about school, girls, and Magic the Gathering.

While Dario had been the best influence on me that summer, I’d been a bad, geeky influence on him, pushing my obsession with Magic the Gathering into his life. After enrichment, we’d sometimes hop on our bikes (or our roller-blades, ugh), and make our way into the neighboring town of Roselle Park, to pick up Magic the Gathering cards from a local… well, it’s hard to call it an ice cream shop.

This place sold ice cream, Italian Ice, horrible pizza, baseball memorabilia, and Magic the Gathering cards. It was one of those weird shops that couldn't quite make up its mind about what it wanted to be, like a locksmith that also sells DVDs, or your local corner deli that suddenly gets a MetroPCS stand in it.

I suppose that was sort of the perfect representation of me and Dario that summer before high school; two kids nervous about the future, spending time at a place that didn't know what it was or where it was really going.

Over the summer, during our long walks home from enrichment classes and journeys to the mixed up store, I learned that Dario hadn't had it easy either. He’d been picked on a lot, made fun of because of his large front teeth (for the record, he now has a flawless charming smile), and got into a lot of fights. But, like a proper Planeswalker, he came out stronger after those experiences. He put things in perspective for me growing up.

We spent a lot of time talking about high school. We talked about the kind of classes we wanted to take, our friends that would going there (two of which are in my wedding party), what talking to girls would be like, and of course, the things we were afraid of… which sometimes included girls.

For me, it was the older kids I knew would be waiting for me. The ones who ruined my first year of junior high. I rambled to Dario at length about this, how my family had even kicked around the idea of private school.

“People are scared of what they don’t understand.” Dario would say. “Don’t worry. I've got your back.”

Or at least, encouraging words along those lines. It’s been over a decade, and the exact phrases have since faded from memory. But the warmth and encouragement of his words… that feeling remains, when I think about that time before high school, when I was scared and unsure. He stressed that he would be there, and he certainly was.

He was there:

To show a scared kid there was nothing to be afraid of.

On train rides to other cities to meet girls from the Internet, only to get lost and have to walk the highway to find a bus back to Elizabeth.

To explain you’re more than what people assume you are.

For school band and theater auditions galore, followed by ruckus and antics backstage.

As support during breakups of the most epic kind, high school through college, heartache mended with KFC chicken wraps and White Castle sliders.

With rides in his gigantic first car.

To cry with me in the movie theater during Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, even though I promised I’d never bring that up.

For the first Lord of the Rings movie, and the last Lord of the Rings movie.

Ready with a beer whenever he came home from the Air Force, ready to pick things up as though no time or distance had passed.

When you play Magic the Gathering, and summon a character to the battlefield, generally they can’t attack unless they have a special ability. Haste or something. They aren't ready to dive in, to face the challenge. They need to time recoup. Summoning sickness, they call it.

Dario wouldn't refused to let me be that card in high school, to sit back and wait on the first day. He cast a haste spell, and encouraged me to jump into the fray.

If you happen across this story, I want you to think about the kids who had your back growing up. That helped shape you into the person you are today. Who pushed you, challenged you. That was the Planeswalker in your life. Dario was that guy for me.

He taught me its okay for a guy to talk about his feelings.

That things that make us different, also make us stronger.

And that summoning sickness is for Magic cards.

He’s had my back for years. He has always been there. And he’ll be there at the wedding.

And that’s how I met groomsman number two.

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Image Source: DeviantArt