Best Friends
Over the years I have been blessed with numerous good friends. Some are friends no longer because they chose to start using drugs, we had a falling out (which were usually my fault,) or one of us moved away and we never really stayed in touch. During all of these years, I’ve only had a handful of “best friends.” I guess I set the bar really high for a person that is part of my life in such an important way.
While growing up, I would move quite a bit, and leave friends behind in old neighborhoods. I really never did have a best friend. I was still learning about friendship and how friends should treat one another. My father has tons of great friends, and I learned quite a bit from them by watching how they would treat each other. They would joke around, insult each other, and laugh at minor misfortunes that some of them would experience. However, when the chips were down, and it was time to pitch in and help, they would drop everything for their friends. I was never directly taught how to treat my friends, but as I was growing up, I learned quite a bit from observing how my father and his friends treated each other. I guess it’s one of the better things that I learned from my dad even though he didn’t try to teach me anything directly.
As I think back to all of my friends, I guess my first best friend was Chris. We lived fairly close to each other. His mother and my mother were good friends, and we were in the Cub Scouts together. We held on to our friendship for quite a while. Then he got into some legal troubles, and was sent away to a juvenile facility that was about a three hour drive away. I don’t remember the exact details, but I remember that it was some pretty bad stuff. I didn’t want to associate with someone like that, so I never did make a point to look him up once he was free.
Several years passed before I met Curtis. He is, without a doubt, one of the most creative and intelligent people that I’ve ever met. We had lots of common, and that’s why we got along so well. We met our freshman year of high school, and we were both social outcasts. This helped us bond quickly, and we remained tight until his dad was transfered to Oklahoma just before our senior year of high school. We would do almost everything together. We would ride our bikes to the mall (a 25 mile round trip), skateboard (Curtis actually taught me how to skate), build remote control cars, sneak out at night and roam the neighborhood for the fun of it, and just hang out and joke. We had such a great time together. Curtis wrote me a letter a few months after he moved. I was going to write him back, but the letter ended up getting washed in my jeans pocket. The letter, along with his address, was destroyed, and I’ve never been in touch with him since.
A few months after Curtis moved away, my senior year of high school started. Through my first love, Heather, I came to meet a great group of friends. They were all in a drug prevention/recovery program, and I was invited to hang out with them. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant among teens in my home town, and I figured that I could stay clean by hanging out with these people. I was right. We had a blast hanging out as a group. I couldn’t single any one of them out as a best friend, but they were all great to be around. It wasn’t until recent years that I found a comparable group of friends. When I graduated high school, I (along with a few others) was ousted from the group because the drug prevention hangout that we stayed at after school was for high school students only. There was an adult group, but I had nothing in common with them. I tried attending their meetings, but it just wasn’t the same. Out of the high school group, I managed to bond with J.J. quite well. We ended up moving in together after high school, and we lived together with a variety of roommates over the course of the next two years. J.J. and I spent so much time together that my step-mother would proclaim that we were attached at the hip. J.J., being a recovered drug addict, slipped and fell back into drug use. I was there for him. I reached out to him, and offered to pull him back into sobriety. The new “friends” that he made were heavy drug users, and he enjoyed life through the haze of drugs more than he valued life on the straight and narrow. I didn’t want to get sucked into that form of living, so I cut ties with J.J., and moved on. It was a painful thing to do. J.J. and I had been through quite a bit together. Up to that point in my life, I had never found someone that I connected with so well, or knew as well as I knew J.J. We had that strange, mystical connection that some twins share. In a tight spot, we would look at each other and, without speaking a word, know what the other person thought. It was strange. It was great. I’m still sad to this day that I had to cut him out of my life.
Several years passed, and I met Jason. We played dungeons and dragons together for a year or so before we really connected. He was still living with his parents in a small town about an hour drive north of my hometown. He would drive down for the D&D games, and if they ran late, he would crash at my place for the night instead of driving home. Eventually our gaming group got together almost every night, which meant that Jason was at my place almost every night as well. When we would stop gaming, and everyone would go home, Jason and I would sit and talk, joke, and smoke cigarettes until the wee hours of the morning. After a few months of doing this, our friendship was cemented fast. I’ll never find a replacement for J.J., but Jason managed to fill the void that J.J. had left behind. Jason and I started to hang out outside D&D, and we would pretty much go everywhere together. I had another friend “connected at the hip.” Jason eventually moved in with me and my roommate, and we both got into mudding, and joined the Society for Creative Anachronisms pretty much at the same time. We would spend endless hours together on the mud. We had two computers and two phone lines. We would sit next to each other and play the games, so we were almost always together in the game, and we could see each other’s screens at all times. It was a blast. While in the SCA, we joined two rival houses, but we were always together. The heads of our houses frowned on us being together all the time, but we didn’t care. However, when it came time for war, houses were (mostly) forgotten, and we would have each other’s back during the battles. We were willing to die for each other. We also lived in a borderline bad neighborhood at the time. One night one of our neighbors started beating his wife in their front yard. I ran out to break it up, and I got the guy off of the woman. He came after me, and I manged to coax him back onto my property. Keep in mind: this is Texas. He was attacking me on my own property. Jason, my roommate, or I could shoot and kill the guy and be legally free of repercussions. Jason stepped on to the porch with his .357 magnum, and told the guy that he should stop. The look on the guy’s face was priceless, and it was at that moment that I realized that Jason would be willing to kill for me as well as die for me. I had finally found someone that I could call a best friend. We spent another year together as good friends, but I was getting tired of my home town. I couldn’t find a job anywhere, so I picked up my life and took it to San Antonio. I only saw Jason one other time after that. He had moved to Arkansas to be with his mother, and I drove up to Arkansas to visit him for a weekend. It happened to be the re-release of Star Wars Episode IV, and he was a huge Star Wars fan. I figured I’d take him to the movie for his birthday. We had a good time for the long weekend, but it was over way too quickly. When I left Arkansas, I never saw him again. I talked to him a few times over the years, but I have not spoken to Jason since around 1999. He told me that he was entering a seminary school to become a Catholic priest. His ultimate goal was to become a Franciscan Monk and teach to convicts that are spending time in prison. It’s a noble aspiration. I really would love to reconnect with him, but I’m not sure that will ever happen. Maybe if I save up some money for a private investigator, I’ll be able to find him. I just hope that he’s alive, happy, and doing well in his endeavors.
Since Jason and I parted ways, I have not had a “best friend.” Sure, I’ve had friends. I still have friends, and I love the friends that I have. However, none of them really jump out at me as being a better friend than all of the rest. I’m close to all of my friends, and I have their back at all times. I’m also pretty sure that they have my back as well, but would they kill for me? Would they die for me? I don’t know. Maybe I’m holding the bar too high. Each of my best friends has been better than the previous ones. Should I stop looking to improve upon what I’ve had in the past? Maybe the ghosts in my past are too impressive and I’ll never consider another person my best friend because of that. I’m sure it isn’t fair to the people that are currently in my life, but I’m not sure that I can stop comparing what I currently have to what I once had. Maybe someday, I’ll find that just right person that I can step up and claim to be a best friend. Maybe I’ll never have that again. The thought of never having a best friend again kind of makes me sad. I enjoyed having someone in my life that I could rely on for anything. I also enjoyed being there for a person in all aspects of life.
Chris, Curtis, J.J., Jason, I hope this day finds you happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise.
