Ten Twenty Ten. Stephen Polando
I found the truest love I have ever known, in the game of hockey. Ross raised me to be a Detroit Red Wings fan. Steve Yzerman is my hero. I spent countless hours in our driveway on rollerblades scoring goals and pretending to be “Stevie Y” or members of the famed “Russian 5” that the Red Wings featured in the 1990s. I scored so many imaginary goals on Patrick Roy it’s insane. At some point I even got my friends in on the game of hockey. As a child I loved hockey more than anything and would regularly impress adults with my knowledge. I often still joke that I have a Ph.D. in sports. I can usually tell in less than a minute if the person I’m talking to is a casual sports fan, a pretend enthusiast, or an actual enthusiast like myself. Ladies and gentleman, I am a sports snob.
My friends and I all attended Goodman Elementary School across the street. Home of the Gators. Most of my friends lived right down the street or just a couple blocks away. Everybody lived within the square mile between Dobson and Price roads east to west and Warner and Ray roads north to south. It is actually just outside Tempe and I probably spent 25 of my 35 years living in this area. When I go back today, it still feels like home. Nobody still lives in those respective houses but they all still mean something to me when I see them. Occasionally I will drive through the neighborhood at Christmas, when many homes are decorated in lights. It’s always a fun and happy time to run into random people you grew up with.
Sometime during the fourth grade, Guy Saggione ended up becoming my best friend. He still is to this day. Guy was always “Little Guy” because his father was “Big Guy.” His dad was from Chicago and was very Italian. He owned a couple of hair salons. Guy’s mom, Terri, also owned a hair salon, in Old Town Scottsdale. His parents were divorced for as long as I’ve known him but they stayed close and almost had a best-friend relationship. Which I can attest sets a great example for your kids and their friends.
For a pretty large part of my life, Guy and I were inseparable. We remained best friends throughout high school. We would meet up at the Starbucks he worked at most Friday and Saturday nights before going out. Our group of friends then consisted of us two, as well as Luis, who I met in the eighth grade. We had gym class together and right away we liked each other because we were two of the better athletes in class. We were both skinny and ultra-competitive. Two weeks into our new friendship, I confronted a classmate about calling me a poor sport. When I say I confronted him, I mean that I asked him, “Hey, did you call me a poor sport?” So, not very aggressive. He then proceeded to smash my face into his knee.
Luis had my back and chased him down, only to lose a front tooth in the altercation. Luis was from a Mexican family and so they took him to Mexico to get the dental work done. This resulted in the new tooth being a shade of green. So it often would get made of fun of. I always wore it like, “He got that shit being a good friend, so please shut the fuck up.”
Rounding out our crew was a couple named Mike and Katie. We called Mike “Money,” though. The four of us, along with whatever girls Luis and Guy dated, would spend most weeknights on my mom’s patio smoking hookah and listening to music. It was like our very own “That ‘70s Show.”
My mom would occasionally make us margaritas. Nicholas would come and hang out as well, and sometimes we would all go in and play Halo on Xbox. These memories are some of my most cherished from our home. It’s when all of us became so much closer. Guy ended up being the best man for both Money and Luis in their weddings. I was Guy’s best man when he married Kelly in our late 20s. Guy is one of the most charming people I have ever met. He is a real-life Joey Tribbiani of “Friends,” maybe not as dumb, though. He now has a son and a daughter. His son, of course, is “Baby Guy.”
After high school, I tried doing a year of community college. But I wasn’t truly engaged. I was going to school because it was what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t really take it seriously, and quickly realized it was a waste of money. I ended up doing one semester, and basically decided the school route wasn’t for me. I spent a lot of my free time hanging out with my friends at Starbucks and going out to college parties on the weekends. I definitely lived like I was going to college, and hung out with all the people that were going to college. I just wasn’t doing so myself.
It was a fun couple years of just working and partying with my friends. I didn’t overdo it. I would never drink and drive or do anything reckless. Sometimes I would just get too drunk and pass out. That was my fatal flaw when I drank. Like any 18- or 19-year-old, I was really just trying to meet people of the opposite sex while enjoying my youth.
Three
On July 2, 2005, my childhood home in Chandler burned down. It started on that patio where my friends and I spent so many nights together. I was 20 years old. I have found this to be a pivotal moment in my life, and therefore that is where this story truly begins ...
*Phone ringing*
Hello?
Stephen? It’s Betsy. Why is your house on fire?
What? Who is this?
Betsy, Alyssa’s friend. Your house is on fire!
I’m in my apartment. What are you talking about?
*(Inaudible chatter)*
Steph, it’s Alyssa. Your house is on fire.
It hit me differently when she said it. Alyssa was the girl I took to my senior prom. One of the first girls I ever really loved. Unknown to her, she is also the person that taught me that the best measurement to use in figuring out how I feel about a person is to gauge how it makes me feel when I make them laugh. I always made Alyssa laugh. She is still one of my closest friends in the world. Her mother will almost certainly be the first person to buy this book. Her brother and sister are two of my favorite people as well. They all lived right down the street my whole life. If Alyssa says my house is on fire, then it is a certainty that my house is on fire.
It was 1:16 in the afternoon. The call woke me up. I don’t truly remember the final words of that call. I was still a little drunk from the night before, but I felt real sober, real quick. I walked into the living room of my shitty apartment, which I had just moved into in June, and saw my brother. Nicholas had slept on my couch for the very first time, otherwise, he would have been sleeping in the house that was currently on fire.
“Hey, did you get a call about the house being on fire?”
“Yeah, like 5 minutes ago,” he said with an exceptionally numb look on his face.
In a very frustrated tone I asked, “You didn’t think maybe you should wake me up for that?”
We quickly headed down the stairs to the parking lot to get into my brand new black Toyota Corolla, which I had bought for my 20th birthday a few months earlier. I lit a cigarette while Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” played loudly. We had to drive seven miles, mostly going south on the 101 freeway from Broadway to Warner.
The moment I remember most from this day was not actually seeing our house ablaze. It was at Elliot Road and the 101, nearly two miles away from our home, when we saw the black and white smoke soaring upwards into the sky. Nicholas and I just looked into each other’s eyes. We didn’t say anything. But the moment became very real. To this day it one of most real, saddest, and impossible moments to describe. Both of us surely raced through the scenarios of what we would find below that smoke.
When we arrived, we actually had to park pretty far away, maybe a quarter-mile. Apparently many people in the neighborhood decided to take their Saturday afternoon to go watch our house burn down. That really pissed me off at the time. Honestly, the rest of that day is kind of a blur. The fire was mostly extinguished by the time we arrived, but the smell lingered. That smell still lingers in my mind. It was essentially just charred wood. It was like a campfire smell, except in this case, it included the scents of all the things you found most important. It wasn’t the smell of the campfire itself, it was the smell of your clothes after a campfire. The way the smoke soaks into you and remains on that hoodie until you’ve washed it. I have smelled many fires since that day.