One of the really great things about my job is the solitude and rote work. Not that those things are necessarily good in and of themselves, mind you, but it certainly allows me to get a lot of thinking done. So while I walked around the Print Shop today, doing my duties, my thoughts drifted back to the day on the Blog and then to my friends and eventually onto friendship in general. I think it was pretty obvious that I am unhappy with a certain thing that happened on here the day before yesterday, but even more so was the shock over the way everyone else handled my reaction to it. It seemed that of all of you, only monki and Tim realized what was going on, and everyone else automatically took a kneejerk reaction against me. That hit me pretty hard, especially since I consider you all my friends, and I did figure that you would all realize what was going on and essentially help me. This got me to thinking about friendship in general, and I just started writing after I got home... So this is kind of rambling and emotional. Sorry. But I get to the point, eventually.
. . .
I realized that I haven't had a lot of friends. I don't mean that in an
anti-social sense, but in the sense that I picked them carefully and the few friends I made, I kept; I never felt that I needed any more than a handful of real friends. This is the exact opposite of my sister, who made sure she had a circle of 10 or so friends, but who those 10 were fluctuated and changed with the weeks. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll get to that bit in the High School section.
My first ever friend's name was Ernie. Ernie Mieczerkowitz. I'm not entirely sure if I spelled that right, because I don't own anything from that time of my life anymore that could tell me. But I still remember my friend's name. I was friends with Ernie throughout the 1st grade. I had just moved from Centerville where I had attended a Catholic preschool and I had never had any close friends. Ernie had the distinction of being not only my first friend, but the one who lived closest to me. I remember that I could bike down to the apartment he shared with his dad which was in a small shoddy apartment complex a few blocks away from my house, and take turns playing the original Zelda on his Nintendo after school. None of you would know Ernie. After grade 1 was over, I went to his apartment during the first week of summer vacation and nobody was there.
Nor the next day, nor the next.
Eventually, I stopped biking down and checking. The first day of school, 2nd grade, came and Ernie wasn't in class. During roll call, his name wasn't called. I've never seen Ernie since.
I didn't have any friends through the second grade.
In third grade, we got a new student. From the thick, round glasses (I wasn't in glasses for another year, I believe) to the Beatles-style mop of black hair, to the collared 3-button striped shirts it was plainly obvious: the new kid was a
total fucking dork. Martin and I ignored each other for about half the year. During a swap meet, wherein the kids would trade a toy or other small item with each other, Martin and I happened to end up swapping. I don't remember what the items were, exactly, but I remember that we both really liked each other's stuff and ended up talking about our interests, which also happened to be quite similar. Plus we really liked each other's stuff. It didn't take long before we were fast friends, due mainly to mutual interests and, well,
the liking of each other's stuff. I don't really have to tell you how this one turned out. Just look two posts below this one. Although the "each other's stuff" bit became fairly lopsided over the years as Martin would go on to continually accrue more and far superior stuff than me.
Things were pretty stable on the friendship front through the end of Elementary. I didn't really so much as talk to anyone except for Martin, but we'd talk about books, TV shows, cartoons, toys, and of course, video games. After graduating from Elementary, Martin and I went on to Middle School. This involved the somewhat frightening prospect of
mixing with the other Elementary schools. That event would prove to be a big shakeup to my friendship paradigm.
I don't remember this quite as well as my meeting with Martin, but I do believe I met Jason first. Jason was from the Lovilia school, and he was a big jolly guy that I liked immediately. He liked to laugh. Jason introduced Martin and I to his other friends: Morgan, Jesse, and Scott. The five of us became a fairly close group of friends and hung out all the time in and outside of school. Eventually, Scott would move away and the 4 of us that were left would go on to the Albia High School. I'm glossing over a lot of shit, but I don't remember much of it. AD&D on the weekends was fun. School was not so fun, but tolerable.
I didn't like High School though. There were way too many people there for my tastes (I didn't like crowds, even then). Plus, most of them were really incredibly stupid. Luckily, I had my Group. We stuck to ourselves, eating often out on a bench right outside the cafeteria rather than with the other kids. We got picked on a lot, unless Jason was around. Nobody fucked with us when Jason was around. I have a lot of vivid memories from High School, but most of them were bad. The gauntlet in the hallways. Phys Ed. The summers were different though. Because Martin lived out of town and my other friends were all in/around Lovilia the summers started off being pretty dull and boring. Then came the pool.
I always liked to swim, and I was actually pretty good at it. I've got some medals somewhere, mostly endurance stuff. But anyways, I loved the water. After a few weeks at the pool, I kept running into the same trio of wacky people and we'd start joking around or playing paddleball (flipflop on the hand for a bat, tennis ball for a ball. First base is the ladder, second base is.... over there in the water someplace, and third was the 2ft marker on the edge). After a while, we started actually meeting to hang out at the pool. I didn't learn their names for probably a month or two, and they continued calling me Cohan for the better part of... Well, actually it's going on 12 years now for some of them. One of them was this tall lanky guy with a huge melon. He was the goofiest. The other one was a shorter, chunky guy that knew everything about everything-- you know, if you asked
him. And finally was
teh girl. We'd meet at the pool when it opened (1:30) and stay until it closed (8:00). That was pretty much my summer for quite a few years.
High School sucked, but it had it's bright moments, and that was those friends. We fought and called each other's names, but we never broke the friendships over shit like that. Friendships were more important than words. Which brings me, in a sense, to my sister.
Having a sister that is a scant 2-years younger than you is interesting. On the one hand, there's all her cute friends. On the other hand, it's all her cute, albeit crazy psycho-bitch friends
that stalked you. But more interesting was how my sister handled her friends as opposed to me. Jen was popular, and I was not, which certainly made a difference. Martin and I had been friends for quite a few years. The Lovilia gang had been my friends for a few less, but still a plural amount of years. We called each other names, and made fun of each other constantly, but there was no breaks. We didn't throw temper tantrums over a name-calling or a slam, because that was a part of the group dynamic. We grew more and more adept at zinging each other, I can remember in particular Martin and I getting into religious discussions that would always degenerate into mocking the names of each other's particular faith during lunch.
"Luthelick!"
"Cathosmack!"
On the other side of the coin, I saw my sister go through practically the entire roster of the females in her grade in a matter of months. Jen and her friends would never fight or call each other names, until
The Big Blowup which would shatter the friendship of the two and often cause a near-catfight and left the two bitterly discussing the other's slutty ways. The two would reconcile a few months later, only to go through the same sordid ordeal sooner or later. I watched this revolution, mystified, because it was nothing like my own approach. Sure, I would call Martin a "dumbass protestant farmer" and he would shoot back with, "ok you fuckin' Mary-worshipping subnormal."
......and then he'd hit me, with a flourish.
But there were never any hysterics, no breaking of friendships or death-threats. We never screamed "I hate you" at each other. We, and our friendships, were better than that and stronger than that. Jen was superficial. It had to
look good, not
be good. I still don't understand that, even though I see it still in some people today.
During the last year or so of High School, of course, the Pool crew showed up, bringing with them a neurotic little bundle of dark insanity/genius named Dave. Wes, who I had become pretty good friends with through nights spent at the Beary house anyways, hung out with them also and I became friends with them and some of their extended web of friends like Kevin, Amish, and Ryan. Meanwhile, Martin met Kenny through band and we forced him to drive us to his house after school, where we'd play video games and mock each other and Ken's friend Steele throughout the evening, until I would make Kenny drive me home while Martin drove back to his house. (he had a school liscense, but the path took him past the Kearney house).
After graduation, most of the my original crew dissipated. Jesse went off somewhere, I think he was studying robotics. Martin and Morgan went on to college, and I started taking programming classes at IHCC to prepare for a jump to a real college. (no offense to IHCC students). Jason got "saved" and, while he does still live in nearby Knoxville, it just... Isn't the real Jason anymore. I miss the real Jason. I became somewhat closer to the Pool crew, and Karl entered the scene around this time, thanks in no small part to my parent's divorce and subsequent living quarters in an apartment that was mostly empty on the weekends as my mother went to visit her boyfriend/affair guy. I'm sure I don't have to recount too much on
The Apartment. Maybe someone else could fill in some blanks.
In fact, I don't really have to tell the rest of the story, since most of you were now there for it and that's pretty close to now. I moved to Chariton, and then back to Albia, and then back to Chariton again...
Some of you were mentioned in this tome, and some of you weren't. But, some time in the future when I have to break out the story of my past and present friends to a new group of friends, right there after the Apartment I'll have to start listing down "the Attic Apartment crew."
To wind this down, I'd like to address what exactly happened here at 8:30 yesterday morning as I composed my now-rather-infamous post. After finishing off my regular evening surfing, I checked the blog and discovered Andy and Ryan's posts for the day. I read through Andy's and shook my head at his comment towards shawk, "Then you have guys like Morgan who JUST NEVER TRY!" and chuckled. It was a zing, yes, but I knew Andy, and I could read through the context that he was joking. shawk responded in kind in the reply, but I really would have just shook my head and stayed out of that one. That's why I never posted anything about Andy, even though he essentially did the same thing I lashed out at Ryan for.
Which brings me to Ryan's post. Unlike Andy's taunt, Ryan was not trying to be silly or funny or "zing," he was being vindictive and trying to hurt. You could read it, feel it. It was pounded into every key. He was using his sentences like a weapon, aiming for something that wasn't vital, but that would leave a scar. It was malice, pure and simple.
This was not funny. This was not me and Martin calling each other "yoo bastard" and "cockmonkey." This was a line of spite, purely intended to hurt someone.
In (ye ol' 20/20) hindsight, I shouldn't have tried to fight fire with fire. I should have been more mature, and not had an equal and opposite reaction. Without my post, I'm sure this would have died down and only one person would have been hurt, instead of causing trouble to the whole group. Vengeance against something like this will never fix the problem, but will only make it worse.
So, sorry about that and I hope this isn't where I have to close my chapter on the Attic Apartment.
I'm willing to keep talking about this, like adults, or to drop it now. I don't care about which way it goes, as long as it is acted upon in a mature fashion. Although it would probably be better for all involved to get back to pictures of giant spiders and jokes about gay siamese twins than having to deal with this heavy shit.
I'm worn out, physically and emotionally. So I'm going to bed now.
