Dave was in the Zone.

It wasn’t the fact that Dave had actually scored the goal. It was the fact that you knew what was next.

The celebration.

He used to come right up in your face, make an odd eeekkk-uhhhhh noise, and then run round doing it to the rest of the team. Annoying. What was even more bothering was the reality that he seemed to score a lot. Not only football. He seemed to be successful in anything that he wanted to do well in. Not academic things like school. It was always sport. Or computer games. Yes, in the mid-eighties the eeekkk-uhhhhh was rampant in our part of town. Now, the strange thing about Dave’s success is that he knew when he was going to score, seconds before he had actually done it. Every time. Even if he didn’t have the ball. He named it ‘The Feeling.’ Cheesy I know, but it was the eighties. I can recall being about 9 years old, and playing football for our primary school team. We were drawing with the opposition, and there was literally seconds left on the clock. Dave hadn’t really done anything the whole game, but suddenly seemed to perk up. He was always quite subdued until ‘it’ happened. One look over at me, a nod and a smile, and I knew what was coming next.

Big goal.

Eeekkk-uhhhhh.

Professional sportsmen call ‘The feeling’ ‘being in the zone.’ This happened all the time when we were young. Dave used ‘The Feeling’ to find money in the bushes. It could also be used to find old rain-sodden porn. Yes, ‘The Feeling’ was extremely useful. And it made for great entertainment. Dave wasn’t the coolest kid in school, but he was my best friend, and to watch him tease the cooler kids with his cheeky triumphs was hilarious. I got in a lot of fights for Dave. Dave was special. Unfortunately for Dave the magic was soon to become less and less. The ‘awkward years’ seemed to extinguish my friend’s science. It only seemed to surface in times of wholesome juvenility.

Those being us acting like children.

Now, when Dave expected his magic to manifest, it normally did. He believed it to be real, and lo and behold, it became real. To a person of a sceptical nature, this would properly sound far fetched. Kids stuff. But I witnessed it on many occasions, as did many other people. You will have to take my word for it. But what interests me most about my friend’s experience is the way it diminished, as we got older. As we travelled through secondary school, we were gradually picking up the ‘rules’ that we would later use to be thriving adults. I don’t mean rules like ‘get off the grass you vegetable!’ Or ‘ Where’s your homework Rodgers?’ I mean the social rules, like becoming attracted to girls, and fighting for a position in the school status ladder. Things change very quickly in your early teens, and new rules are being learned daily. It’s warfare out there. So, with all this new learning, old ways of life are soon forgotten. The enchantment goes as we learn the rules of our new world, and as Dave matured, his magic became less and less…

Poor Dave.

I am going to leave Dave for a little while, but we will come back to him later…