Friendship

Minute changes to the blog are in the process as I write this entry. The links subsection of the sidebar will re-appear shortly, as well as more fun images for you to all drool at. Animal has returned, but I am unsure how long he will remain as my on-line persona.

Initially, I was hoping to use my storage space at Yahoo! GeoCities to host my images. It didn't work out to my chagrin. Never fear; the web is full of cost-free, legal solutions. My problem should be solved, indefinitely.

Viewing some other blogs, it appears that the skin I have chosen for my site appears to be quite popular. I never thought myself as being a clone per se, so I suppose some customizing to this skin may be an order. Damn you, trend followers! Funny thing is though, I like the color scheme, the fonts, and the overall general appearance.

It appears that my laptop has bit the big one. Yesterday I received my much-anticipated part in the mail. I spent a few hours installing the new inverter board, and managed to get it back together, with no leftover parts, or pieces that were either broken or with improper fit. You could imagine my disappointment when I powered up my laptop and there was still no screen. I am at the point where I have had just about enough of this situation. I have sunk a great deal of cash into that machine, purchasing wireless cards, routers, additional drives and software, and now this happens. Now it appears that I will have to buy a new machine, and sell the other for parts. I'd love to upgrade to a brand-new machine, but the cost appears prohibitive. I may end up shopping on eBay for an older machine. I really don't want to spend more than a thousand dollars. My car insurance is due in a month or so, which is not a trivial expense.

You see, nearly three years ago, I was involved in an automobile accident. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but both vehicles were damaged beyond repair. It was determined that I was at fault, and charged with careless driving. Around here, that's a pretty serious offense. My insurance is astronomical -- in fact what I pay in insurance premiums, I could have paid my new car off twice already (a 1999 Toyota). I am looking forward to this fall, when the offence is erased from my driving record, and my insurance premiums return to a more manageable level.

So between a new computer and insurance premiums, I wonder how I am going to manage to eat, sleep, and live for the next several months.

On a completely different tangent, I'd like to tell you a little about my youth. I had a real tough childhood. I was the smallest person in my class which made me the victim of countless bullying incidents. I never had a girlfriend all through high school, and I often hid in the Library with other runts, geeks, and nerds in order to avoid bullying, extortion, being laughed at, or any other forms of abuse that teenagers are normally subjected to. I tried everything I could to become popular. My parents wouldn't buy me fashionable clothes so I could fit in with the crowd. Instead, I got the second-rate "look-alike but not quite authentic" reproductions, which were much less expensive. No matter how hard I tried to be popular, it would not make a difference. I was doomed. I was a nerd. I liked Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, and video games. I wasn't allowed to go out past 10:00 on weekends. To make things even worse, I played in the school orchestra.

My parents would go and see their best friends on a monthly basis. As I had no friends that were allowed out on weekends, by default I was dragged to my parents' friends house. At the time, I actually didn't mind. They had a daughter that was one year younger than I. She was thin, beautiful, and very popular. There came a point where she was never home, since she was out partying with dozens of her friends. We went to different schools, so we never crossed paths during the day. I would often look forward to going over to their house, in a chance that I could hang out with her. Instead, it came to a point where it was disappointing to go over to their house, because she wasn't there. I'd have to resort to hanging out with her younger brother, who was about four years my junior. Can you imagine how difficult it is to be fourteen, and trying to hang out and have fun with a ten year old?

I would lay awake at night, praying that one day, I could be as popular as her. She seemed to have such a fulfilling life. She had boyfriends, countless other acquaintances of both genders; she went to parties, school dances, and she had the trendy clothes. She had it all. All I had was a full head of curly brown hair that could never be styled right, and second-rate clothes.

One night, we went over to my parents' friends house. And lo and behold, she was staying home that night. In fact, her parents let her throw a party in the basement. We arrived early, before the festivities were to begin, but it didn't take long. Soon, the basement became packed with at least one hundred teenagers -- none whom I knew -- all drinking, flirting, dancing, smoking, screaming, and making out. It was my first "real" party. Sure, I had been to parties before -- at Chuck "E" Cheese, but this was a real party, where there were a hundred teenagers, behaving like teenagers, under minimal parental supervision.

She had cool parents. They would let her throw occasional parties, and let them drink because, well, teenagers will drink anyway. At least this way, there will be someone there in case things get out of control.

I was lucky that she let me hang out with her friends. She was kind, and introduced me to everyone, even though I had no clue who they all were. I would have been lucky if I remembered three names. There were a few jerks there, but generally I found the people to be quite friendly while they were under the influence of alcohol. I was reluctant to have any drinks at the party, with my parents being upstairs, and no booze of my own. I wasn't about to ask a total stranger if I could have some of his (or her) alcohol. So I just hung out.
The party went all night. People didn't leave until 4:00 in the morning. By then my parents had been long gone, and I was crashing in the spare room. Before I fell asleep, I told myself that something had to change in my life. I was seventeen, going in to my last year of high school, and I wanted something more out of my life than being known as a geek all through high school. I was going to do whatever it took to become popular.

Enter Jesus Christ, my savior. Okay, he wasn't Jesus, but the fall he was cast as Jesus in the high school production of Godspell. He had long hair, wore a leather jacket and torn jeans, and was one of the most popular people in my high school. The population of my school was over 1600, so if you mind me saying so, he would have been in the top five males. He was also a superbly friendly individual. I befriended "JC", as we had similar interests: we loved music, and we loved to jam with other musicians. He didn't seem to mind that I was riding on his coattails. My initial purpose of hanging out with him was to observe how be interacted with other people, and perhaps being seen in his company, I might be "cool by association". It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was I, all along, who needed to change.

It was as simple as an attitude adjustment. I quit caring if others snickered and pointed fingers. I wore what I wanted -- and I wore clothes that I wanted to wear -- not what was bought for me. I was soon wearing flannel shirts, growing my hair long, and wearing shirts from popular bands of the day (which weren't any more expensive than the shirts I had been getting all along). Generally the uglier the clothing, the cooler it was. I learned to control my passive personality, and made an effort to talk with anybody -- no matter their popularity. How I conducted myself amongst others was a reflection of who I was, who I wanted to be, and not what I expected others to perceive me as. I also had one outlet that fed me tons of brownie points: I played in an alternative rock band that played gigs in schools and punk halls around town.

It didn't take very long. My popularity grew by leaps and bounds. The phone at my house started ringing off the hook. Girls were calling me. I started going to parties. I started to have the social life that I had only dreamed of. Within one year I went from being a nerd to becoming one of the most popular people in not only my school, but in the entire city.

One year. That's all it took for me to go from zero to hero. That attitude change stuck with my for a number of years after high school. I soon went to College, and tore the campus up. I was unstoppable; the wildest partier you had ever seen. At that point in my life, I couldn't be bothered to have a girlfriend because I was too wild to be tied down. I was completely out of control, and it's a small wonder that I survived that first year of college.

The next year, I was off to University, and the trend continued. I moved into Rez, and within one week I knew all the students in residence. I hung out with everybody, and it didn't matter if they were jocks, nerds, freaks, or preps. I partied like I never had before -- and it's a small wonder how I managed to pass my classes. My popularity continued even though I was in a different city, with a whole new slough of strangers. I felt it was an incredible feat, I was once someone who tried to follow along and be accepted by his peers, and soon became the leader; the trendsetter.

The next and subsequent years of my schooling were turbulent. I grew a great deal mentally, and what I wanted out of my life began to change. I soon realized that what I had, wasn't what I really wanted all along. It wasn't about the quantity of friends, it was about the quality of friendship I had with them. For the remaining years of my University career, I had not so many friends, but the quality of the friendship I had with them improved greatly. I became very close to that group, and that friendship remains to this day. That being said, I was still "popular" by definition. We still threw wild parties where there would be tons of people, and I still had more friends than I could handle. But this time, I knew I had something even better than popularity, and acceptance with the masses. I had friends that would be the best of friends for the rest of our lives.

I often wonder how many "friends" I have had in the last decade or so. It numbers beyond the hundreds; it could be as high as a few thousand. I remember going to bars and clubs in my College and University years, and knowing someone at each and every table. There would be five hundred people in the bar, and I would know twenty percent of them. That's not a lot of time to have a conversation with everyone.

How many true friends do I have now? Probably a few small dozen. Does that upset me? Not in the least. I am at a different period in my life, and taking in account how busy I am with my jobs, I like to spend what time remains with my closest friends. Many of my friends are married with children, which doesn't allow us to go out and party like we used to. I am probably still the wildest out of all of them. The difference in my life is that I am more wise, reserved, and responsible than I used to be. Believe it or not, being responsible isn't such a bad thing.

I was lucky enough to have the best of both worlds when it came to my social life. I had the pleasure of being a nobody, and also achieve (local) super-stardom. Because of this, I have no regrets.