Best friends.

Over the years, I have gone through a lot of people that I considered a best friend. Some betrayed the trust we had, others started good then just fell apart, and one went on and off.

The earliest best friend I had was my cousin, whom I have referred to as "O" in past entries. We still are best friends to this day, but not as close as I'd like to think, but that's another story. As kids, she was the bossy selfish one, and I was the one that could tolerate it best. I was able to reason with her selfish, bossy ways enough to make things enjoyable for the both of us, and she even started adapting to things I liked, such as video games, and having our toys fight each other instead of stupid plots of a surprise party for her animals, owning a store, and what not. Actually, some of our stories started getting really fucked up, but that sounds like a whole separate entry altogether. I essentially got into the toys she got into. I was one of the few boys who had one of those original "Littlest Pet Shop" toys before they redid the image. Course, we played with them a lot different as intended, with deaths and shit.

Around late elementary, early middle school is when we had a dry period of just not really talking, which is about when I got another friend who I consider to be my best mate (Call him X). It was his first day of second grade and I just went right up to him and said, "Hey! Are you new here? I don't remember seeing you around!" From there, we became best friends for about... 2 and half years. We had a real key difference in that I was an inside kid and he was an outside kid. He managed to get me out of the house a lot more than I wanted to, but I enjoyed exploring the creek near our houses, and going deep in the woods of it. In fact, there was a time during the winter where the creek froze up, and we were just jumping up and down on it, surprised how solid it was... and it broke! We were so soaked and freezing!

What happened to us was we got into some rather nasty verbal fights (and a few physical ones), and he found another person to string along with us that actually liked the outdoors as much as he did so we became "enemies." It was more like a darker side of rivalry, but we considered ourselves to be enemies. Things got a bit dark here in terms of friends, since my cousin was getting busy with school by this time, and X had gotten a lot of the school to hate me since he suddenly became popular. I started to hibernate in my home right after school, getting very depressive. Parents threw me into a special class called, "Art Therapy" to help express my feelings through art projects. That never really helped.

My next-door neighbor who was a friend (but not really best friend; he was a kid 5 years younger than me) introduced me to the person I would consider a best friend in high school, but nothing more than just a friend  until then. She was a year older than me like my cousin O, but she was more of a tomboy. She helped get me into the WWF (when it was called that), and also became the bad influence for my younger neighbor friend with drugs, stealing and shit. We became a group of friends around the neighborhood with another girl, always hanging out at the playground. However, our group was very fickle with each other, and played very nasty pranks on each other. Once was invited over to Tomboy's house, so I walked over and she left a note saying she went to the movies, k bye. However, Neighbor Kid and Other Girl's bikes were parked in front of her house. HMMM. We also played nasty tricks on neighbor kid, saying he had an older brother that used to be here but was killed, and on Other Girl with her weight, so we all were rather vicious. Only Tomboy seemed to have no real pranks played on her, being the oldest I suppose elected her as leader and thus unfazed by pranks.

Our group was joined by two more girls who were sisters, which was funny because our age/grade difference went into a straight line then, haha. Tomboy was oldest, then me, then Other girl, Brunette of the sisters, Blonde of sisters, then Neighbor kid. By high school, Tomboy was my best friend, while my cousin was coming back into the picture somewhat as a friend. Tomboy and I would go to the mall all the time, either getting a ride from our family, or walking the 3-5 miles to there. Neighbor kid and others would sometimes come along, but it was mainly Tomboy and I every Friday night. I would go into the arcade, she would get drugs and socialize outside, and we'd meet up every now and then. She also stole things and had me hold onto them for her since I always brought my backpack with me for water and such.

Doesn't sound like much, but it worked for us. We both needed company, we just had different sets of friends (I had arcade idiots, she had druggies that hung outside the movie theater). We stood up for each other too.... well usually. :P

Towards the end of high school, however, the neighbor hood crew started to disperse. Tomboy was going to college soon, and she started flaking out on us. Neighbor kid by now was such a weasel with his tricks on me, I started to ignore him completely and Other Girl disappeared. I was still good friends with the sisters however, just we weren't exactly close. We all used to hang out every new years at Neighbor Kid's house, but one year he decided to mess with me saying he wasn't having a party this time and the others weren't coming. I said fine and invited an older friend I made in high school to my house for a small gathering. Later in the evening, Neighbor Kid admitted he was lying and said I could come over, but I told him to piss off, I had company. That company became my best friend  to this day, even though she can be aggravating, I wouldn't change it for the world! Besides my cousin, she's my longest lasting best friend.

There were a few minor "best friend" scenarios that happened in between, but those ended really nasty, and would be incredibly long. Another entry for those! :P