My Friends

Some people go through life with lots of friends, and it’s hard to keep track of them all. People like me have only a handful of close friends at any one time, and I can write it down as a narrative.

I was painfully shy in pre-school and kindergarten, to the point of not being able to talk to any of the other children at school. I had no friends these first few years.

Then, in first grade, TJ befriended me. Every time I was on the playground by myself, he would always call out to me, “Hey, Joel, over here. Come play with us.”

I had no idea what I had done to deserve this kindness, and was overjoyed simply to have a friend. He once mentioned that our friendship all started when I joined him in some sort of make believe fishing game, but I never remembered this, and the event had obviously not made a big enough impression on me to stick into my memory.

Although TJ was the same age as me, I treated him like a big brother. I would follow him around and do what he did. When our class played any sort of sport, I always called out, “I’m on TJ’s team.” I embarrassed him occasionally this way, but he didn’t seem to mind too much.

The next year, David joined our group. David had been TJ’s friend from Kindergarten, but they didn’t hang out in first grade because they were in separate homeroom classes. In second grade the three of us were all in the same homeroom, and the three of us hung out together all the time.

But the following year, TJ was in a different homeroom class. This doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but at the time it was the beginning of the end of our friendship. We never had a big fight or anything dramatic like that. We just gradually drifted apart. We only saw each other at recess, and then he was always playing games with the kids from his homeroom class, and I felt more comfortable with the kids from my homeroom.

I tried to make an effort to spend time with TJ during recess, and hang out with the other homeroom class, but I felt more and more on the outside. David, on the other hand, made new friends with Matt and Josh. And I was soon sucked into this new circle as well.

Matt was someone I had always liked, and wanted to get to know better. He was neat, organized, and was a good student without being a nerd about it. And he was really funny. He had a way of making us all roll on the floor with laughter with his sharp one-liners or monologues.

This new group of friends was completely centered around Matt. The rest of us didn’t care so much for each other, but enjoyed being around Matt. David and I had been friends before of course, but we didn’t get along well with Josh. Josh had been Matt’s friend from the previous year, and I think he saw the rest of us as impinging on that friendship. He treated us with a certain coldness and distance.

Josh was very loud, opinionated, and had a sometimes abrasive personality. Matt picked up on this, and loved to egg Josh on about one thing or another, just to see Josh’s reaction. Josh tolerated it from Matt, but would get absolutely infuriated when the rest of us would start in. More than once I remember him stomping away from us on the playground, too furious to speak.

One example of this: In 4th or 5th grade Josh had a special kind of retainer that involved rubber bands going from one part of his jaw to another. He could only open his mouth a certain distance. If he opened up too wide, the rubber bands would snap, and he would have to spend five minutes in front of the mirror getting everything back in place.

Unfortunately for Josh, quietness was not his strength. Matt immediately picked up on this, and would egg Josh on about something until Josh would shout, the bands would snap, and Josh would have to go the bathroom mirror to fix everything.

I thought this was the funniest thing in the world and continued this game long after the Matt had gotten sick of it. For years afterwards, I think Josh held a bit of a grudge about that.

But in 5th grade, the unthinkable happened. Matt’s parents decided they could no longer afford private school, and Matt told us he wouldn’t at our school next year. We were all devastated.

Matt himself knew that the other 3 of us were only held together by him. “What really sucks,” he remarked to me one day, “is that after I’m gone, the group will be over. You and David will still be friends, but you and Josh won’t still hang around.”

I thought the same thing would happen. But instead the opposite did. Once Matt was gone, Josh became my best friend. Matt had always dominated things, so I never really got a chance to get to know Josh. But once Matt was gone, Josh and I began to hit it off very well. He was loud, and he loved talking, and many people thought of him as annoying, but since I was quiet, shy, and incredibly introverted, we seemed like a perfect fit. He had the courage to walk up and talk to anyone in a way I never could, be it the most popular girl or the strictest teacher.

In those days we were a lot more religious and a somewhat given to the middle-school habit of hyperbole, and once Josh commented to me, “You know, I believe God sent Matt to another school so that the two of us could become better friends.” And I said that I had often thought the same thing.

Throughout middle school, David, Josh and I were always together. Many of the rest of our classmates thought we were geeks, but I didn’t care. If you have friends, who cares if you’re popular or not?

It wasn’t until high school that I really felt on the outside. Our school, Ada Christian, had been the same small group of people from kindergarten all the way through 8th grade. But in 9th grade, we started at “Christian High.” Suddenly the world I had known since first grade was shattered, and we were now in a big school, with classmates from all of the area middle schools.

I assumed the 3 of us would go through high school just like we did in middle school; maybe not popular, but strong friends. Josh, however, wanted to make a break for it and try for popularity.

The first day of school he inserted himself into a group of jocks from Ada Christian, and tried to make himself part of the conversation. David and I were somewhat confused by this, but nevertheless followed him into the new circle. Josh was less than pleased. “What are you guys doing?” he asked. “Quit following me everywhere I go. This is high school now. We need to go out and make new friends.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re talking to a group of people from Ada Christian.”

“People from Ada Christian that I wasn’t friends with yet,” he answered.

I wanted to tell him that he had the past nine years to make friends with other kids from Ada, and if he hadn’t done it yet, there was no use starting now. Also those kids had spent the past 9 years making fun of him, so why did he want to try and break into their circle?

But I kept my mouth shut. He was right. The three of us couldn’t spend the next four years only hanging out with each other. We had to expand our circle.

Making friends in high school is difficult, especially if you’re by yourself. Most people spent most of freshman year still in their middle school groups, and only gradually expanded their circle. The cliques were grouped still grouped by the old schools. It’s rough to try and force your way into another clique of kids that have know each other since elementary school.

But I wasn’t by myself. I was with David, which was worse than being by myself. As shy and socially awkward as I was, David was even worse. The two of us were lost without Josh, and David would have been completely lost without me. He followed behind me silently as I tried to integrate myself into one clique after another. It was bad enough trying to force myself in. I couldn’t do it with David next to me.

All I really wanted was just a place to stand. I wasn’t much of a talker, and I didn’t really care if I was involved in the conversation or not. I just wanted to be able to stand in a group and feel like I was part of it. I would walk up to a group and try and take my place in the circle. David would follow behind me, and sometimes stand in the circle with me, sometimes just stand behind me the whole time. I hoped to just slip in un-noticed, but I felt like David was a huge weight I was dragging around. And 9th grade students are very unforgiving. Sometimes we were blatantly told to get lost. Other times someone would ask me coldly, “Yes, may I help you?” or gesturing to David, “Who’s your friend?”

I guess I should have just had a talk with David the way Josh had talked to the two of us on the first day. But I liked to avoid these kind of direct conversations, and so I tried to settle the problem by just ignoring him, and hoping he would get the hint. I would speak to him as little as possible, and try and let him know I didn’t want him following me around. I could see the hurt in his eyes, but he never said anything about it, and eventually stopped trailing me around.

The three of us still kept in touch, and every now and again would get together on the weekend but it was maybe three times in a year. None of us really found any new groups of friends that we were comfortable in, but we roamed around from different groups on our own.

By about Senior year, an eternity later, I seemed on the verge of breaking in and gaining acceptance. I didn’t know why then and I don’t know why now. I was by no means the big man on campus, or a ladies man, but I started hanging out with the popular crowds, and they seemed to tolerate my presence. I started to get invitations to parties and social outings. I was on the homecoming court, voted the friendliest person in the class, and asked to give a speech at senior chapel.

Josh by contrast had entered senior year bitterer than ever. He had tried so hard for three years to force his way into the popular circles, and the harder he tried, the more they abused him and made fun of him.

Since he was the one who had broken up the three of us, he was well aware of the irony of our fates four years later, and I think on some level believed that it was Karma or divine retribution. He repeatedly apologized to me for the way he had treated me freshman year.

I was still friends with him, and valued him as one of the only friends I could be myself around, but at the same time did not hesitate to run him down in front of my new friends when it seemed necessary. Once I was at a party and a popular girl was complaining about a phone call she received from Josh. “Who does he think he is calling me?”

“I don’t know,” someone else said to her. “Hey, you’re pretty good friends with Josh, aren’t you Swags?”

I threw my hands back to indicate refusal. “Whoa, let’s not start throwing around accusations. Who can really fathom the Josh mind when it comes down to it.” This got a good laugh, and the issue was dropped at that.