It has taken me quite some time to finish penning this post, a half a year. This is one of the hardest things I have to talk about. I suppose that's why it has taken me this long to write about it. But still, while my readership grows I must continue to write.
The other day on Facebook I saw this post of a girl wishing her BFF a happy birthday, and then she listed off 47 memories they have made together, things like "Dances to Christina Aguilera with boyband boyfriends", "Taco Bell Runs", "Basketball","Prank phonecalls","Playing guitar hero for the first time","Phat Pharms", "Girl Scouts","Making beer pong tables out of doors", "first jager bomb","Band class shenanigans" and other things like that that they have done together over the last twenty-some years. The second I read these 47 things I immediately broke down crying. I cried about everything I have missed in life experiencing with someone else, a BFF. Once the tears have dried however, I thought to myself "Hey, I did have a BFF that I made a few memories with, I just lost him a while ago." Here's the story of the only BFF I will ever know.
I had a small elementary (1st-5th) class of about 28 or so kids. One of these kids was... let's call him Bob. Me and Bob were in the same grade, and he was also in my Boyscout troop. So in my early days I saw a lot of Bob. I saw a lot of him, but we were never really all that close. That was, until the first day of 6th grade, Middle School came along and as fate decided to see fit, it put mine and Bob's lockers right next to each other. Now this was 6th grade, which meant a new school and attending it with hundreds of new kids we've never met before, cramming in from all the other Elementary Schools in the district. It was scary for me and the rest of my 28 country school-house classmates to say the least. I was the only recognizable person in near sight for Bob, and Bob was the only recognizable person in near sight for me. And so, naturally we became fast friends. We had a few classes together, including homeroom in a computer lab where we would spend all our time playing flash games and looking up funny jokes on the internet-this was before inappropriate sites were blocked you see. I still remember this one little jingle from a video we used to watch all the time "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. There they are standing in a row. Give them a twist, a flick of the wrist, that's what the showmen said, HEY!" We weren't quite entirely sure what it meant, but boy did we get a kick out of it. I remember we also found a site that detailed different types of poop in explicit detail, and gave names for every kind of poop. This was JUST when a computer was a common thing, so that day in age we were learning how to use the computer and the internet by carousing like we did you see.
Soon after seeing each other in school we began hanging out outside of school as well. In the early days I went to his house a few times, but we didn't have as much fun as we did when we were at my house. At his house something always seemed off, and I don't think his parents much liked me. Not ever since they were gone one night and we filled one of his little sister's peeing dolls up with water and started a competition of who could squirt the water the farthest out of the doll's hole. I think it was my turn right when his parents walked in and we got in big trouble. We also liked to take the cushions of their couch off and have sumo wrestling tournaments running into each other as hard as we could, which we weren't supposed to do either. Needless to say after the first year we pretty much exclusively had get-togethers at my house. I always felt more comfortable there anyway. I remember we would play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas for hours upon hours and never sleep, get loaded on Dr. Pepper and candy and watch whatever smut Cinemax was pettling at three in the morning.Needless to say, we got to be right chums by the end of Middle School. (8th) Not only did we spend much time together, but we meshed, lordy lord how we meshed. Better than me and Betty. He was the ying to my yang, we sat together at lunch, and spent every waking hour with one another, giggling and making fun like we did. I remember there were other kids that each of us would hang out with or see in school, but it was never as special as it was when it was just me and Bob. Yeah, that sure was a magical three years. So what ever happened to me and Bob? High School happened.
I don't remember if it happened all at once like I remember it, or little by little, but before long after transferring to a new school for 9th grade, something was different. I remember I had a party for the release of 300 that he came to, that was 9th grade, and I remember then seeing that our regular hang-outs were beginning to diminish into dozens of unanswered phone calls I made to his house and left messages with his Mom or Dad to call me back. And he never did. (This was also before it was common practice for every kid to have their own cell phone you see.) I just can't put my finger on it, but he would never respond to messages I left for him. There was the occasional fluke where I'd call and he would be there to answer and even then 8 times out of 10 he was too busy to hang with me. We still did hang out a few times that year, a few scarce times, the occasional movie or sleepover, but even then... things were starting to get different. As if our growing apart outside of school wasn't bad enough, what eventually did us in was what was going on inside of school. I don't know how or why it happened like it did, blame it on my social quirks if you wish, but for some reason it was the season for labeling and I got labeled a 'creeper' and Bob got labeled 'cool.' It helped that he was on the baseball team, so that earned him a few new jock associates, but I'm convinced our falling out would have happened had he not been in any sports like me either way. It all started with us being unable to sit at the same lunch table. He sat next to dicks who couldn't stop giving me shit, and I would sit next to the only people in the lunchroom who wouldn't give me shit.
Our hanging-out got lesser and lesser by each passing month of 9th grade and 10th grade, and the heckling at school got worse and worse, so much so I wouldn't be surprised if we never even hung out once junior year. Towards the end of it I started to form these questions in my mind: "If me and him are such good friends, better than any of them, why can't he stand up for me!?!? Doesn't our past mean anything!?" and "If he really wanted to hang out with me, wouldn't he be able to respond to any of my phone calls!?!?!" It got to the point that when we actually did hang out finally it was like I resented him, pent up with all this frustration and questions.
I remember the last time we did something with each other, it was the summer before senior year, we went to see a movie in the theater. Stepbrothers. It was the first time we had hung out for months, and I remember it felt so weird, like I had gone and found my long lost best friend at a reunion or something. The movie was hilarious but our laughs were hollow. In a few months senior year would begin, and he would excommunicate me again. For a year, until we both would go off to college and we would never see each other again for the rest of our lives.
By now we both had facebook pages, and while I was right; we didn't see each other apart as fixtures in school, relics of an age long ago, we did message a few times on facebook early senior year. Mind you, when I say we never saw each other don't take that as I wasn't trying, I was calling his house almost every night leaving messages for him with his Mother, I kept this tradition going strong for three thankless years with nothing to show for it. I don't really recall what we said to each other on facebook, I probably just asked him if he could hang out and he would respond with something else he had to do. But that's when it happened, he cut the cord entirely and we stopped talking, even on facebook.
Now, if you know me you know I didn't exactly have a great senior year, between bullying, suicidal urges, brother battles, hospitalizations, OCD running rampant with my sanity, diagnosis with Aspergers, so on and so fourth. Needless to say, at the very end of senior year, after months of not getting a single response from Bob I did the only reasonable thing I thought I could do. I wrote in all caps FUCK YOU BOB DOE!!! on facebook. Possibly the worst mistake of my life, as it has been seven years and I haven't heard from him since.
I still have him on facebook, I still keep the occasional tabs on him. These days he's graduating from college with some big shot degree. I often wonder... wonder if he remembers me, if he ever thinks of me, or does he get so caught up in this new life he's made for himself that his mind never wanders over to little old Tyler. If he was reading this now I would just say to him that if you want to start where we left off, talk a bit of the past, or anything of the like, that... well, you have my facebook.
The other day on Facebook I saw this post of a girl wishing her BFF a happy birthday, and then she listed off 47 memories they have made together, things like "Dances to Christina Aguilera with boyband boyfriends", "Taco Bell Runs", "Basketball","Prank phonecalls","Playing guitar hero for the first time","Phat Pharms", "Girl Scouts","Making beer pong tables out of doors", "first jager bomb","Band class shenanigans" and other things like that that they have done together over the last twenty-some years. The second I read these 47 things I immediately broke down crying. I cried about everything I have missed in life experiencing with someone else, a BFF. Once the tears have dried however, I thought to myself "Hey, I did have a BFF that I made a few memories with, I just lost him a while ago." Here's the story of the only BFF I will ever know.
I had a small elementary (1st-5th) class of about 28 or so kids. One of these kids was... let's call him Bob. Me and Bob were in the same grade, and he was also in my Boyscout troop. So in my early days I saw a lot of Bob. I saw a lot of him, but we were never really all that close. That was, until the first day of 6th grade, Middle School came along and as fate decided to see fit, it put mine and Bob's lockers right next to each other. Now this was 6th grade, which meant a new school and attending it with hundreds of new kids we've never met before, cramming in from all the other Elementary Schools in the district. It was scary for me and the rest of my 28 country school-house classmates to say the least. I was the only recognizable person in near sight for Bob, and Bob was the only recognizable person in near sight for me. And so, naturally we became fast friends. We had a few classes together, including homeroom in a computer lab where we would spend all our time playing flash games and looking up funny jokes on the internet-this was before inappropriate sites were blocked you see. I still remember this one little jingle from a video we used to watch all the time "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. There they are standing in a row. Give them a twist, a flick of the wrist, that's what the showmen said, HEY!" We weren't quite entirely sure what it meant, but boy did we get a kick out of it. I remember we also found a site that detailed different types of poop in explicit detail, and gave names for every kind of poop. This was JUST when a computer was a common thing, so that day in age we were learning how to use the computer and the internet by carousing like we did you see.
Soon after seeing each other in school we began hanging out outside of school as well. In the early days I went to his house a few times, but we didn't have as much fun as we did when we were at my house. At his house something always seemed off, and I don't think his parents much liked me. Not ever since they were gone one night and we filled one of his little sister's peeing dolls up with water and started a competition of who could squirt the water the farthest out of the doll's hole. I think it was my turn right when his parents walked in and we got in big trouble. We also liked to take the cushions of their couch off and have sumo wrestling tournaments running into each other as hard as we could, which we weren't supposed to do either. Needless to say after the first year we pretty much exclusively had get-togethers at my house. I always felt more comfortable there anyway. I remember we would play Grand Theft Auto San Andreas for hours upon hours and never sleep, get loaded on Dr. Pepper and candy and watch whatever smut Cinemax was pettling at three in the morning.Needless to say, we got to be right chums by the end of Middle School. (8th) Not only did we spend much time together, but we meshed, lordy lord how we meshed. Better than me and Betty. He was the ying to my yang, we sat together at lunch, and spent every waking hour with one another, giggling and making fun like we did. I remember there were other kids that each of us would hang out with or see in school, but it was never as special as it was when it was just me and Bob. Yeah, that sure was a magical three years. So what ever happened to me and Bob? High School happened.
I don't remember if it happened all at once like I remember it, or little by little, but before long after transferring to a new school for 9th grade, something was different. I remember I had a party for the release of 300 that he came to, that was 9th grade, and I remember then seeing that our regular hang-outs were beginning to diminish into dozens of unanswered phone calls I made to his house and left messages with his Mom or Dad to call me back. And he never did. (This was also before it was common practice for every kid to have their own cell phone you see.) I just can't put my finger on it, but he would never respond to messages I left for him. There was the occasional fluke where I'd call and he would be there to answer and even then 8 times out of 10 he was too busy to hang with me. We still did hang out a few times that year, a few scarce times, the occasional movie or sleepover, but even then... things were starting to get different. As if our growing apart outside of school wasn't bad enough, what eventually did us in was what was going on inside of school. I don't know how or why it happened like it did, blame it on my social quirks if you wish, but for some reason it was the season for labeling and I got labeled a 'creeper' and Bob got labeled 'cool.' It helped that he was on the baseball team, so that earned him a few new jock associates, but I'm convinced our falling out would have happened had he not been in any sports like me either way. It all started with us being unable to sit at the same lunch table. He sat next to dicks who couldn't stop giving me shit, and I would sit next to the only people in the lunchroom who wouldn't give me shit.
Our hanging-out got lesser and lesser by each passing month of 9th grade and 10th grade, and the heckling at school got worse and worse, so much so I wouldn't be surprised if we never even hung out once junior year. Towards the end of it I started to form these questions in my mind: "If me and him are such good friends, better than any of them, why can't he stand up for me!?!? Doesn't our past mean anything!?" and "If he really wanted to hang out with me, wouldn't he be able to respond to any of my phone calls!?!?!" It got to the point that when we actually did hang out finally it was like I resented him, pent up with all this frustration and questions.
I remember the last time we did something with each other, it was the summer before senior year, we went to see a movie in the theater. Stepbrothers. It was the first time we had hung out for months, and I remember it felt so weird, like I had gone and found my long lost best friend at a reunion or something. The movie was hilarious but our laughs were hollow. In a few months senior year would begin, and he would excommunicate me again. For a year, until we both would go off to college and we would never see each other again for the rest of our lives.
By now we both had facebook pages, and while I was right; we didn't see each other apart as fixtures in school, relics of an age long ago, we did message a few times on facebook early senior year. Mind you, when I say we never saw each other don't take that as I wasn't trying, I was calling his house almost every night leaving messages for him with his Mother, I kept this tradition going strong for three thankless years with nothing to show for it. I don't really recall what we said to each other on facebook, I probably just asked him if he could hang out and he would respond with something else he had to do. But that's when it happened, he cut the cord entirely and we stopped talking, even on facebook.
Now, if you know me you know I didn't exactly have a great senior year, between bullying, suicidal urges, brother battles, hospitalizations, OCD running rampant with my sanity, diagnosis with Aspergers, so on and so fourth. Needless to say, at the very end of senior year, after months of not getting a single response from Bob I did the only reasonable thing I thought I could do. I wrote in all caps FUCK YOU BOB DOE!!! on facebook. Possibly the worst mistake of my life, as it has been seven years and I haven't heard from him since.
I still have him on facebook, I still keep the occasional tabs on him. These days he's graduating from college with some big shot degree. I often wonder... wonder if he remembers me, if he ever thinks of me, or does he get so caught up in this new life he's made for himself that his mind never wanders over to little old Tyler. If he was reading this now I would just say to him that if you want to start where we left off, talk a bit of the past, or anything of the like, that... well, you have my facebook.
