The Ghost and the Darkness

A memoir of a simpler time

I turned forty last year.

That age felt ancient to me as a child. I associated it with "over the hill" parties and "gag gifts." I didn't know what either of those things were, but they felt like a big deal. Besides an uptick in the number of birthday parties I attended and an increase in my browser magnification, my fortieth year was like any other.

It's tough to identify the years, days, or moments that introduced any noticeable change in my identity. There are few times in the last four decades that I look back and say "I was different before that." I associate only one of them with a movie.

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The Ghost and the Darkness is a historical adventure film from the mid-90s. It stars two heavy hitters of the era: Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The plot centers around a pair of man-eating lions that terrorized workers during the construction of the Uganda Railway. It's average at its best, forgettable at its worst.

The film made no impact.

I saw it a month after the start of my freshman year. Until that point, I attended a private school. In seventh and eighth grade we shared a few classes with the public schoolers, but we remained *others*. I entered high school as a "Wencie," a minor pejorative used to refer to the private schoolers. It was a tough spot for a freshman without a tribe.

My memory of the school year is spotty. I associate it with a general feeling of unease. A stretch where my sense of self shifted due to the whims of other children. But I'm not writing about that year. I'm writing about a single day in the autumn of 1997.

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It must have been a Friday when I asked my new friend Adam to spend the night. Adam was one of the public schoolers. He was part of a group I'd bubbled into those first few weeks. I can’t recall my mental state, but I imagine we shared a similar sense of humor. It's something I still value in others.

I remember walking home from school with Adam. I rarely walked home. It's one of the few times I did. I didn't want to seem like a kid. Kids get picked up by their parents. High schoolers walked.

Never mind that driving is a quintessential high school experience. Adam and I walked.

I remember grabbing a Mountain Dew from the garage, kicking in the front door, and tossing the can up the stairs while I yelled "SNIPERS!" Adam shares this vivid memory. I left a hole in the drywall behind the door. I pretended like it was no big deal, like it always happened. Like I often kick my front door in and chuck a full can of Mountain Dew up the stairs.

We both knew it was a big deal. It only took 26 years to fess up.

I remember raking a pile of leaves and jumping into them from our maple tree. I knew every one of its branches. I had it mastered. And I needed to show my new friend Adam how good I was at climbing.

I still find time to drive by that tree. Not my house, my tree. It's possible I never climbed it again.

I remember renting a video tape from the Silver Screen. We had to ask Adam's parents if he could watch an R-rated movie. What a thrill! There wasn't a VHS on those shelves that we couldn't watch that night. We were kings of our new world. We settled on The Ghost and the Darkness, projecting ourselves onto Kilmer and Douglas.

It was the coolest movie we could find. To Adam's credit, he has never mentioned we had to watch it with my mom.

The movie was unremarkable. If it was a better film, it might have overshadowed my memories of that day. When someone mentions The Ghost and the Darkness—and it's almost always Adam that does—I remember that day in autumn.

The day I left my childhood behind.

But it's not gone. I can pick it back up.

The kids and I?

We've got a lot of climbing to do.