TOBY SCHWARTZ

I believe Toby was with me at Magee. But I don't have any memories of him until our days at Clarke. I didn't have him in 6th grade. But I'd see him in the gym after lunch. He seemed to always be milling around with the girls.

Toby was a littler guy. I got to know him in 7th grade. We had every class together. And we became pretty good friends. There weren't a lot of guys in that class. In fact, if memory serves, it was Toby, Jason Anderson, Kevin Dehne, Jim Colby, Wyatt Wood, Ron (Cuyler) Gretz, Rob Sisel, B.J. Lutterman and myself. So we were nine guys and 20-25 girls. I think us guys tended to be closer, simply due to being outnumbered.

In gym class that year, Toby was often "burned" by Kevin Dehne. In this case, "burning" meant having his shorts pulled down. I can recall Jenny Malley of all people encouraging this behavior in Kevin. But as luck would have it, Toby had the longest gym shirt on the planet. And when his shorts came down. his shirt covered his whole butt. I wasn't as fortunate. Once or twice mine came down - nothing like an underwear flash.

Something else happened in gym class early that year. 7th grade was the first year that we as students were made to take showers after class. The first day we had to do this, Toby and I actually ducked out of the locker room without doing so. Mr. Wolff was pissed. I remember asking him, "Why do we need to shower anyway?" To which Jenny Malley replied "Because you stink!" In Jenny's defense, she wasn't singling out Toby and myself. She was referring to everyone in general. But I still disagreed. It was gym class. It wasn't like we were running a marathon. No one ever got sweaty anyway. But I digress.

The next class, we all showered. As I was undressing, I was actually sitting next to Toby. And I noticed something... Toby was at half mast. It wasn't a full boner mind you. It was more of a Hollywood loaf. I remember thinking oh boy, this is really bad for him. I showered and got dressed. But after class, Jason Anderson came up to me and said, "You better watch out for Toby." I played dumb and asked why. Jason then said that Toby did indeed have a boner in the shower. Let the teasing begin! Toby heard about it all year long. Of course he denied it though. You have to, you know? I felt bad for him. As a guy, sometimes boners happen for no reason. I was terrified that it might happen to me at some point. But thankfully, it never did. Incidentally, after about a month, Wolff stopped enforcing the shower rule. And we all stopped taking them. So I guess we stunk for awhile. But gym class was 7th hour, the last class of the day. So be it.

Toby was one of the guys who would occasionally join us when we walked over to my house for lunch. On the way back one day, Kevin attacked Toby, threw him in a snow bank, and doused him with snow. Why? Because that's what Kevin did. Toby emerged a little wet, but no worse for wear.

I remember riding my bike over to Toby's in October. He lived right by Clarke. Toby was busy though. He was carving pumpkins with his mom and sister.

Toby once told me that he found a $20.00 bill in his neighbor's yard. he used it to buy the Star Wars Dagobah Playset.

I see to recall that Toby was a fan of Lionel Ritchie during 7th grade.

As the year went on, I got into more and more trouble. Toby was a much more straight-laced kid. But I dragged him down with me a few times. He tried not to get involved with some of my shit sometimes. But hey, I was fun! 7th grade was a blast! I know for a fact that Toby's mom hated me. She was involved with the school - on the school board or something. And I know she used to try to steer him away from having anything at all to do with me. One day Toby came to school and said, "Do you know that your name has come up for possible suspension 12 times?" My response? "Cool!" In actuality, I only got suspended twice that year. And both of them were decided at the time of the incident, not at a school board meeting.

In Mr. Stodola's science class, Toby and I used to play a game. He sat next to me, in another row. Julie Scott sat next to me on the other side, in another row. Pam Schley sat next to Toby on his other side. So Pam and Julie were three rows apart. During class, when it was quiet, I'd whisper to Julie that Pam wanted her. Toby would whisper to Pam that Julie wanted her. Then the two of them would try to communicate with each other from three rows apart, trying to read each other's lips, figuring out what each wanted - which was of course nothing. It was pretty funny to watch.

In Mr. Longhini's math class, Toby sat behind Pam and would regularly pull and snap her bra strap. This fun came to an end when Brenda Dax saw it and blabbed rather loudly about it.

In 8th grade, I think Toby and I had one class together. But for the life of me, I can't recall which one. Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps we just ate lunch together. Yes, I think that's it.

At some point in 8th grade, Toby got a detention. He was freaking out about it because his mom would have been mortified. So he ended up telling her that he was able to stay after school to work on the computers. I guess she bought it.

In freshman year, Toby sat two seats down from me in Mr. Wheeler's science class. Julie Scott sat between us. When we did experiments and stuff, Toby and I would usually team up. I remember teaching him that if you stuch a pen cap up your nose and tickled, you could make yourself sneeze. I still use that method today if I have a sneeze that simply won't come out on its own.

Throughout high school, Toby and I never hung out. But we always remained friends - or at least friendly. Toby was involved in the school newspaper.

In the summer between our junior and senior year, I was hanging out with Scott Jaklin. For whatever reason, in the middle of the night, we decided to walk over to Toby's house. His parents and sister were out of town. For whatever reason, I brought up the subject of the catholic communion crackers, and how they tasted like shit. No, I'm not catholic. But once or twice I went with Dave Svatek to his church. And I took communion. Why not? Is that blasphemous? Anyway, Toby disappeared to his room, then came out with a bag of them. He then started to eat them. Toby had stolen several bags from his church. I loved the irony. I couldn't believe he liked to eat those things though. We also made some prank phone calls to fellow graduate, Brian Belongia. You can find details of that in my entry on him.

In our senior year, we had Mr. Hensel's class together. He sat right next to me. We got a free day once when Hensel was out. We knew it was coming the day before. So I went home and found all my mazes and notebooks from 7th grade. And we had a good day reminiscing.

In our senior year, various teachers required us to keep journals. Many students used these journals as diaries. Not that I had an abundance of intimate details, but I never put anything personal in mine that I wouldn't want others to read. There was a justified fear that it could end up in the wrong hands. A pair of those wrong hands belonged to Toby. Apparently he used to steal the journals of others and read them. And if I'm not mistaken, I think he actually got in trouble (with the law) for doing it as well. Incidentally, Toby had a journal too. He let me read it. In it, he mentioned that his sister was too trendy, and that his mom wore clothes from the 1970's. I don't know why I remember that. I just do.

There were rumors that if you bribed Mr. Hensel with chocolate, it could help your grade. I felt I was in serious danger of failing the second semester. So I was all set to do just that. But something better came up. One day in class Hensel was very distraught. He told us how his Latin/English dictionary was missing. Honestly, he seemed devastated by this. Toby told me that he had taken it - for whatever reason. So I asked him if I could have it. So he gave it to me. Then I returned it to Hensel, telling him that I'd found it on top of the lockers in the basement. He was overjoyed! And I passed, even though I shouldn't have.

After high school, whenever Meff came up to visit, we would often call Toby in the middle of the night, and tell him to turn on Dr. Gene Scott. He never seemed too amused by this. I think Toby was working at Walmart at the time.

I saw Toby again around 1994 or 1995. He owned a business at the J.C. Penney Mall. It was an antique store. I was greatly impressed with his Star Wars collection. I was getting into Star Wars again at the time. So I bought a lot of stuff from him, including a pillow case - which I still use to this day, much to the chagrin of my wife. Toby even followed me to my house one night to view my collection.

Toby eventually moved his business to a location right off of the highway by the Newton exit. The last time I saw him was around 2000. I went back once or twice since then. But Toby had sold the business.

A few years ago, I happened to see Toby's name in the paper. He had opened an EBAY store and was selling stuff for people. I believe he does that to this day. He's got impressive feedback. Today Toby also works part time at the Manitowoc YMCA, where he occasionally runs into my parents. As far as I know, he has never married.

UPDATE - 11/9/06 - Kevin Dehne and I have tried to see Toby on both of our trips to Two Rivers. We've stopped at his house twice on each day. Thus far, he has never been home. He did E-mail me however, and said that he was disappointed that he'd missed us. Although he lives on Memorial Drive in Two Rivers, he apparently works at a Sheboygan bank every other Saturday. Of course both of our trips have been on Saturdays. The picture below was taken on August 12th, 2006.