Dan Nichols lived two blocks from me. Of course in the SW hills of Portland, Oregon, it wasn’t considered two blocks as much as in two neighborhoods over.   Our life was defined by neighborhoods.  You didn’t know many kids two neighborhoods away,  let alone one.  But Dan transcended neighborhood boundaries.  My life was defined much around my relationship with Dan Nichols.  From 1st grade through 3rd, we went to St Thomas Moore Catholic school together, and moved to public school at Bridlemile at 4th grade.  We did everything together. Summers were spent riding Dan’s mini-bike. I remember looking at magazines advertising Li’l Indian mini bikes,  wondering, hoping I too would have one someday.  We took flower peddles and squeezed them, added water and tried to sell the result as perfume door to door.  When the Portland Zoo announced the birth of a baby elephant we thought we should go door to door and raise funds.  I don’t think we raised much… what we did I think we spent at the grocery store on candy….  only a buck or two though.   We would sell our lunch ticket for 30 cents and walk the two miles to the nearest Mini mart and stock up on bubble gum and candy bars.  We would then go back to school and sell the gum.  Maybe this was my first beginnings as an entrepreneur.  I don’t know how we did it.  The sugar kept us going til dinner I guess.  And now I have the fillings to prove it.

My life revolved around Dan.   We were buddies.  Life was really good.  I don’t think I had an insecure thought in my head.   i never considered what I may have been seen as in the eyes of others.  I had friends, unconditional friends…. like Dan.

Then came seventh grade my “innocence was carried away by the unforeseen.”  For some reason, we had not seen much of each other that summer.  I was so excited to  be reunited again at school.  And then came that fateful first day.  We sat down at lunch and I was so excited to see him,  ready to catch up on summer and begin a new year together.  I remember it so clearly….  He called me “butt lips.”!  And that was the last time Dan Nichols ever talked to me.  And my first experience with insecurity.  From that point on Dan was my nemesis, churning out contempt for me like a flood.

I discovered later that Dan’s father had taken the family into the back yard and shot himself.   How could I have missed that?  As a young boy, the experience of rejection overpowered any sense of compassion or understanding towards Dan.

I was too young to understand what happened.  I prayed the rosary.  At night I cried myself to sleep.  I talked to no one about it.  I had no one to go to.   My parents were oblivious to my loneliness and despair.

So by the eight grade it was easy to jump into the drug and party culture that provided me an escape from the soberness that with every morning haunted me with loneliness and insecurity.  I honestly thought that my friends -  and friends from that point on were somewhat tenuous and noncommittal anyway – were always mocking my lips and looks behind my back.

Although this was a very painful time in my life, I became aware of the emptiness that is the condition of every man.   Yet this insecurity ultimately led to my conversion to Christianity at seventeen.   I am so sad for Dan, yet this experience in my life was the loving providence of God drawing me to Him.  God also used this fundamental fear in me to preserve me from the sexual revolution that was exploding all around me and I was able to enter my marriage without the haunting memories of failure that so many of my generation has experienced.

Since my conversion, I have experienced many more painful times like business failures, dreadful accidents and disappointments.  Yet each one has opened a “door of opportunity” that would not have been possible without the “turn” that pain brings.

I lost track of Dan Nichols, but I think of him and pray for him regularly.  I hope to see him again and this time be able to love him unconditionally as my Savior did to me.  And to show him a man who also was cut off from his beloved father and experienced loss greater than any human being could ever experience.  And he did it for Dan and me.