Elementary Alliances- Part 1 - November 11, 2008

Up until recently, I was too trusting of people. Once you had my trust it would be very hard to lose it. It took would've taken you spitting in my face, fucking my mom and punching my grandma before I would cut ties with you.

The first time I had my trust betrayed was in 5th grade. I don't remember what my friend did, to be honest, probably because in the grand scheme of things, 5th grade drama doesn't matter that much. What I do remember is crying in the car afterwards, but still thinking that friend was an exception. That this wasn't normal. I couldn't accept that people I trusted could turn on me.

Then I met my group of friends for 6th grade. It was the peak of my social life, which is extremely sad in and of itself. But nevertheless, I consider that time to be my happiest. I could still eat, play video games, comfortably spend time in my chair, and didn't need to be under professional supervision all day. I loved chicken nuggets with ketchup and one of those milk baggies. I played wall ball and kick ball. Kids weren't afraid to talk to me and most of them changed the rules for me so I could participate.

My three best friends were Oscar, Derek and Pedro from the Vegas story. We did everything together. We held weekly No Mercy tag team tournaments complete with championship belts. We gathered religiously one Sunday every month to worship the holy trinity of tag teams: The Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boyz and Edge and Christian.

One day on Oscar's birthday we went down to the basketball court at his apartment complex (I was great at screens). We just wanted to play some 2-on-2, but there were four middle-schoolers already there. They were from Bonita, the "ghetto" school five minutes away. They were tough, schooled in the ways of the street and hardened by life.

We asked them if they wanted to play. They did. So we played. And we talked. But we were a bit scared of them; they looked tough. One of them even had a diamond earring and everything.. And they talked tough, too. We thought they were just more worldly than us, but looking back, they were probably just scared about the changes they were going through (and the changes we were about to go through).

"Once you get to middle-school... everything changes man," one of them said, "You have to look out for yourself, man." All his friends nodded along as he bounced the ball in, understanding the inherent wisdom in his words.

The guy talked and talked while I tried to cover him (I emphasize trying here, because even then I knew any effort I made to cover anyone was doomed to fail). Even if I managed to stick with him, there was nothing I could do to cover him short of thrusting forward as he jumped and tackling him mid-air (which, in retrospect, might have been funny) if he decided to take the shot. He was annoying me. He was an idiot.

"Oh, shit! He's trying to run me over!" he said. He was getting more obnoxious by the second.

"Holy shit! Holy shit, he's gonna do it!" This eventually started bothering me. I want to say my hand slipped, that it wasn't on purpose, but I'm not sure there wasn't some part of me that meant to do it. I do know, however, that I felt horrible as soon as it happened.

"Fuck, fuck! Get off me, man!"

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. It was a total accident. I swear." I cringed as I rolled off his foot.

"Whatever."

After that there was a verbal altercation that may or may have not been related to the foot incident and we started walking back to Oscar's place.

"Dude, they're gonna jump us." Oscar looked back at them nervously. He was always the paranoid, antsy one-- a chubby kid with dirty blonde hair and a thick Mexican accent. We all looked back at them; they were staring back menacingly.

"Just keep walking. Keep walking." Derek said. He was the only non-Mexican in the group-- the shortest of all of us, but mad scrappy. We looked back again and they were back to playing basketball. We all breathed easier.

"Where's Oscar?"

We all looked around, he was gone.

"Did he just run home?" Pedro wondered.

"What a pussy!" laughed Derek.

"Hehehe. I can't believed he ran home." I chimed in.

We found him in his room playing No Mercy. "What the fuck man? How'd you get here so fast?"

"I don't know, man. I just ran... those guys were scary. Talking about how they have to look out for themselves."

He handed each of us a controller and we split off into teams. Pedro and me, and Derek and Oscar. Derek and I never played together since we were the best and didn't consider it fair. He was a bit better, but only because he could use the R button to repel grapples and I couldn't. And even then we were pretty even.

I thought it would always be that way. We would never drift apart like those sappy movies said. We would be eating KFC and watching wrestling well into our thirties. Okay, maybe not wrestling, but other things. Everyone saying middle school changed things was wrong. They were wrong. We were different.

To Be Continued...

Posted by HotWheelz at 6:52 PM

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