Just a potato

By: CADE GRUNST

Posted: 11/16/07

Justin Dale/Dell Pacheco doesn't know his middle name. His parents disagree on which name they actually gave him, so we told him to check his official documentation. Here we hit a snag: Turns out his birth certificate said "Dale" but his Social Security card had "Dell" printed in Pacheco's sloppy grammar-school handwriting. This is quintessential Justin.

I first met J.P. my freshman year of high school. At that point in his life, his hobbies mainly involved lying on the couch and eating, but that changed once his mom stepped in. She was appalled at the idea of her baby getting tubby, so she put him on so-called diet pills. The pills were a strange alchemical mixture of caffeine, sugar and cocaine, designed to give whoever was foolish enough to consume them enough energy to overthrow a small government. Her plan backfired. Now instead of slowly grazing and idly flicking through channels, Justin became a munchie-powered speed demon. Ever read about how a school of piranhas can skeletonize a cow in four minutes? Potato (our nickname for J.P.) was just like that, except with a box of Bagel Bites.

In an astonishing shock, by the time J.P. was a sophomore he had a sizeable gut. He never let it get him down. Potato may have dated more than any six guys I've ever known, which always used to baffle me. How was it that a none-too-terribly-bright dude with a rockin' beer belly could, without fail, get girls to give him a second glance? This was a guy who never zipped his fly because he was always "open for business," a guy who once shaved his initials into the hair on his butt cheeks but was too dumb to realize he'd used a mirror and so now had a backwards PJ on his bum. And yet he went through nearly a girl a week. It was bewildering.

I asked him about it once. His reply was sage-like. "Cade, it's simple," he explained. "I've been using the same strategy since kindergarten. Pinch their butt and run away. It's amazing - the ladies are like, 'Who was that man? Why did he pinch me? Where has he gone?' It makes me mysterious, and the ladies love their mysteries." That guy gives me hope.

At the peak of his game, Potato once hit on a substitute teacher using his standard tricks. In his defense, she didn't much look like a sub, so he'd mistaken her for a new senior. When she politely asked him to back the heck off, though, Justin didn't miss a beat. He immediately asked her to prom, and seemed genuinely surprised when she turned him down.

Justin at his finest: At our high school, student athletes with a certain GPA received certificates of merit from the office. One fine day J.P., who was most certainly no athlete or scholar, received two soccer awards intended for someone far more deserving. Any normal person would have returned them, or maybe just thrown 'em away. Justin took them home, tore them into tiny pieces and spent the next two weeks gradually smoking them from a corncob pipe. This was the pipe he'd bought to accessorize along with the Mason jars from which he drank at all times. I really couldn't make this stuff up.

The last time I saw Justa-Potato, his stories had changed somewhat. Throughout high school, we all knew he drank and smoked and chewed way too much, but we never really worried. Now…

"Did you guys see 'Transformers?'" he asked us. "Me and Adam, we were downtown and we'd taken a lot of acid and WE SAW ONE!" I'm not going to lie - part of me is really jealous that J.P. saw more than meets the eye.

The awesomeness is tempered with a bit of worry, however. J.P. is dangerously close to staying in Martinez for the rest of his life, which may be brief. He always used to joke that he was racing us to cancer and get really excited about winning. I'm no expert, but substance abuse seems like a poor way to die. Justin buddy, if you're out there, please take care of yourself.

CADE GRUNST wants everyone to reach out to their friends, because they may not be around for as long as you want them to. Reminisce with him at cade@ucdavis.edu.