Writer's Block: Friends of old
Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
uberreiniger[Error: unknown template qotd]
There was a kid I grew up with named Willie. He was one of the few people who was nice to me throughout grade school and middle school so I hung out with him even though he was really hyper and annoying. When I got my big awesome circle of friends in high school he was a part of it and for a couple of years me and him and a few other guys would eat lunch together every day. They'd always bring their comic books and art supplies to lunch and the hour would pass in spirited debate over such important topics as whether Wolverine could kick Ghost Rider's ass.
ASIDE: I think this experience is the reason why I don't understand why it's some badge of pride to be called a "geek." When I grew up "geek" was an insult. However, we were a half dozen big, muscular guys; several of whom were on the football and/or wrestling teams. Willie in particular had quite a ripped physique and was a varsity wrestler. So... if anybody at our high school was calling us geeks they never did it to our faces.
It was hard to get together with Willie because his parents were really strict. In fact, many of our adventures as a group involved smuggling him around when his parents thought he was doing something else. In one hilarious instance his grandmother walked in on one of our D&D sessions. I had left some spare change lying on the table next to some of my dice so she thought we were gambling! So Willie spent the next several weeks grounded for "gambling." Since his parents were very religious and thought RPG's were Satanic it's actually probably better that they jumped to the gambling conclusion and none of us bothered to correct them.
Willie was extremely lascivious and not in a good way. Anything with tits got his non-stop, undivided attention complete with any excuse to put his hands on them. Not in an obvious groping way, but this whole act of "Hey, I'm a big friendly guy who just casually touches people when I talk! I do it to everybody, see?" It was creepy and gross. Willie loved rap music and dressed as ghetto as he possibly could in our small Kansas wheat field town. His skin was as white as one's skin can be without being an albino.
Unfortunately, once Willie was in college and out from under his parents' draconian control he was no longer content to worship gangsta culture from afar. He started getting in more and more trouble at school until he was kicked out. His parents wouldn't tolerate this and wouldn't let him come home, so he was homeless for a while. None of us wanted to let him crash for very long due to his increasingly erratic behavior. The last straw came when he snuck into a friend's house while he was asleep and stole the seventy-five dollars that was in his wallet. We ostracized him from our group after that.
I've never found out exactly what happened, but somehow the next thing I knew, Willie was in jail. I haven't seen or heard from him since but he was locked up for years and years and might still be there for all I know. It was like people knew why he was there but no one would talk about it. It's one of those things I'll never know.
I guess it says everything about how he turned out that for all the time, all the years I spent with him, that I don't miss him now :(
There was a kid I grew up with named Willie. He was one of the few people who was nice to me throughout grade school and middle school so I hung out with him even though he was really hyper and annoying. When I got my big awesome circle of friends in high school he was a part of it and for a couple of years me and him and a few other guys would eat lunch together every day. They'd always bring their comic books and art supplies to lunch and the hour would pass in spirited debate over such important topics as whether Wolverine could kick Ghost Rider's ass.
ASIDE: I think this experience is the reason why I don't understand why it's some badge of pride to be called a "geek." When I grew up "geek" was an insult. However, we were a half dozen big, muscular guys; several of whom were on the football and/or wrestling teams. Willie in particular had quite a ripped physique and was a varsity wrestler. So... if anybody at our high school was calling us geeks they never did it to our faces.
It was hard to get together with Willie because his parents were really strict. In fact, many of our adventures as a group involved smuggling him around when his parents thought he was doing something else. In one hilarious instance his grandmother walked in on one of our D&D sessions. I had left some spare change lying on the table next to some of my dice so she thought we were gambling! So Willie spent the next several weeks grounded for "gambling." Since his parents were very religious and thought RPG's were Satanic it's actually probably better that they jumped to the gambling conclusion and none of us bothered to correct them.
Willie was extremely lascivious and not in a good way. Anything with tits got his non-stop, undivided attention complete with any excuse to put his hands on them. Not in an obvious groping way, but this whole act of "Hey, I'm a big friendly guy who just casually touches people when I talk! I do it to everybody, see?" It was creepy and gross. Willie loved rap music and dressed as ghetto as he possibly could in our small Kansas wheat field town. His skin was as white as one's skin can be without being an albino.
Unfortunately, once Willie was in college and out from under his parents' draconian control he was no longer content to worship gangsta culture from afar. He started getting in more and more trouble at school until he was kicked out. His parents wouldn't tolerate this and wouldn't let him come home, so he was homeless for a while. None of us wanted to let him crash for very long due to his increasingly erratic behavior. The last straw came when he snuck into a friend's house while he was asleep and stole the seventy-five dollars that was in his wallet. We ostracized him from our group after that.
I've never found out exactly what happened, but somehow the next thing I knew, Willie was in jail. I haven't seen or heard from him since but he was locked up for years and years and might still be there for all I know. It was like people knew why he was there but no one would talk about it. It's one of those things I'll never know.
I guess it says everything about how he turned out that for all the time, all the years I spent with him, that I don't miss him now :(
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-22 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-23 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 12:47 am (UTC)He stayed until our actual graduationdate, was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" and turned down a scholarship to UMR to study Economics at UMKC. I stupidly turned down the same scholarship since I was already at DeVry.
He ended up marrying one of my childhood friends, got divorced and started doing mass quantities of acid. He threw away a great job at AT&T to go backpacking through Europe. We even had a tearful good-bye drink in Westport and I fully expected to never see him again. He returned after a few weeks but never told any of his old friends.
About 7 years later I saw him walking down Grand by Bob Jones Shoes. I gave him a lift and found out he was homeless and living in a shelter until he could get back into rehab. He promised to call me but never did. I saw him about 5 years after that waiting on a bus on the West Side near 23rd & Summit. He told me he was engaged to an 18 year old Portugese girl (he was almost 35) who had a wealthy family. In fact, he was glad he ran into me since he was leaving the country the next day and needed my number and address. I haven't seen him since...
BTW, I had a huge crush on his little sister. Man she was hot!!!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-25 06:27 pm (UTC)