Flashback Friday # 107

My Enemy Becomes My Friend

Hello. Thanks for stopping by and spending a few minutes in my corner of the Internet. In today's edition of Flashback Friday we look into the interesting phenomena of how two people who couldn't stand each other become best friends.

In the school district that I went to (K-12) there were two Elementary schools and kids from these two schools came together in Jr. High. I had made some new friends from the Elementary. One of these friends was Jeb. We got along very well. there was only one problem. Jeb had a friend from Elementary that I couldn't stand, and he wasn't none too thrilled with Jeb having a new friend.

This kid's name was Bart. Bart was a brat. In fact, several people called him that. Whenever I would be talking to Jeb on the playground, Bart would come up behind me an smack the back of my head and race off. Since he was quicker than I was (me being a fatboy), I was never able to catch him. He would whack me, scamper off and laugh like a hyena. This went on all through 7th grade.

8th grade wasn't much better. Then something changed. Several months after school started, we had a new kid move to our school. Jim Olympus was the kid's name. He was in my home room, and since he got to school after lockers were assigned, he needed a locker. I was one of the lucky few that didn't have to share a locker. I volunteered to share my locker with him.

I found out after a few days, that this decision wasn't one of my better ones. Jim was a bit of an odd bird. I guess his folks moved around a lot. He was one of those kids who didn't fit into any category. I tried to make friends with him, but I guess I wasn't the type of person he wanted to hang with.

He started hanging with Derrick, one of the biggest hoods in school. Derrick was just plain creepy. He would be in trouble his entire school career. Jim liked Derrick so much that he offered to share his locker with him. I came in from lunch recess one day to find all my stuff sitting outside the locker with all of Derrick's stuff in it's place.

The first person to come up to me while I was trying to gather up my stuff was Bart. Great, Just what I need. I was sure he was going to get a big kick out of this.

Then he surprised me. He asked what happened. He wasn't gloating or anything. he seemed genuinely concerned. I told him that Jim had asked Derrick to share his locker, which in fact was MY locker. He said that he had had the unfortunate luck to be Derrick's locker mate. If I wanted to move in, I could. So I did.

Two enemies became friends because they now had a common enemy. Derrick "borrowed" things and Bart wasn't happy about it. Jim threw me out, I wasn't happy. We plotted our revenge.

Since I knew the combination, their locker was stacked at least once a week. We often picked trash up from the playground and deposited it in the locker. Walnuts from the tree at the schoolyard boundary found their way into the locker. One would watch while the other wreaked vengeance. We kept this up all year. Jim had no clue as to where I had moved my stuff. We would get together and laugh our heads off. This brought us closer than either of had been with Jeb. Jeb was still our friend, but now we were best friends.

We've kept our friendship all throughout High School & beyond. He was instrumental in getting me into church (but that is another story for another day). Here is a picture of us from last Sunday.

I'm on the left and Bart is on the right. This is why you don't see many pictures of me on my blog. I'm not very photogenic.