Childhood Friends

 

Sluggo Malene lived in my neighborhood for a time when I was growing up.  He was my age but he was smaller than me, and that's saying quite a bit because I was a scrawny little kid.  He got his name from a comic strip called "Nancy." Nancy lived with her Aunt Fritzi and Sluggo was Nancy's tough little friend.  My little friend Sluggo was not tough.  He got the name because he was the polar opposite of Nancy's Sluggo.

Just by coincidence, my little brother Paul had the nickname Butchie.  That name also came from the "Nancy" comic strip. In the strip,  Butch would occasionally beat up Sluggo.  In real life Paul was delicate and small for his age and sick much of the time, hence the (opposite) nickname Butchie.

My friend Sluggo lived on the other side of the street in a big old house that had been divided into tiny apartments.  I don't remember his mother but the two of them lived in two of the cordoned off rooms.  People came and went quickly in the house but Sluggo and his mother stayed a while.  Sluggo was always happy and full of fun and ideas.

What I remember most about him was his love of makeup.  One summer when we were very young, he and I spent hours under a big tree in my back yard smearing on foundation, lipstick and mascara that he'd lifted from his mother's makeup box.  He assured me she'd never miss it.  Sluggo told me that even when they didn't have enough to eat his mom bought copious amounts of makeup on a regular basis.  

I was too young and too naive to give any thought about how unusual it was for Sluggo to be heavily into the makeup routine.  And, in my defense, cross dressing had not yet been invented.  

We had a fun couple of years being friends and then he and his mother were gone and I never heard from him again.  

My brother Paul soon outgrew his nickname Butchie and he grew up to be a devoted husband and father and a truly stand up guy in all areas of his life.  I've often wondered about whatever became of Sluggo. 

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