In life we all have many friends. Some may be funny, some may be quiet, and some may be weird. Hopefully, though, none of them are just plain crazy. And of course having a crazy friend is what happened to me. This all started a long time ago, it was the '80's. I was starting the first grade. Of course for the first while I had no friends. First few weeks in a new school you don't expect to have that many friends. After a few days of not knowing anyone I became friends with John Doe (I'm changing his name). That was a mistake I now know that. At first he was a normal kid. He did, however, have a lot of problems in school (due to not doing any of the work), but other than that he was just average. I think it started in the fourth grade. He turned into one of those kids that would make deals and then twist them to his benefit and leaving the other person with practically nothing. I think it came from his parents being divorced. Since his mom felt sorry for him, because his father didn't want anything to do with him, he could sucker her into getting a lot of what he wanted. I guess an accurate name for him would be a con-artist. But that's not when it really started. It really started when we got to fifth grade and had a math teacher named Ms. May (I'm changing her name too). This teacher was a very unkempt teacher. She smoked, which wouldn't have been so bad (she couldn't smoke in the building) except for the fact that it would seem that she never bothered to brush her teeth or wash her hands. Her teeth had to be the yellowest teeth I've ever seen in all my life, and her hands were caked with nicotine. And above all even without the nicotine stained hands and the yellow teeth she was still ugly. The thing was that she didn't like John. She had very good reasons though, he never did any of the work that she assigned and she would have a lot of talks with him explaining why he had to do the work. He never listened, though, and obviously he failed the class that he had with her that year. The next year it became worse. At St. Derek's (Hey it could happen) there was only one class per grade, and guess which grade she taught. She taught almost all of our subjects except for English and music. As usual John never bothered to do much of the work. Ms. May had more of her little talks with him, and as usual he still didn't bother to do much of the work. Finally, after the year was over, Ms. May was left with no choice but to hold back John. Since S. Peter's won't allow you to repeat a grade in that school, he had to go to Upper Grade. It was then that he became obsessed with getting revenge on Ms. May. Before I get into how he got revenge on her there were a few other thing about him that I noticed. He was constantly trying to one-up me on the things that I had. For instance, I had a computer that was a lot better then the one he had (It was an awesome 386 SX-16, now it's where it belongs, in a junk yard). After the sixth grade he got one that was a lot better then mine. He was constantly putting the one that I had down and wouldn't let me forget that his computer was a lot better than mine. That was very annoying. I also remember when I got a color printer that was better then the one that he had (mine was a 24-pin dot matrix and his was a 9-pin dot matrix (The more pins a dot matrix printer has the better the printout looks)). He put my new printer down because it was considerably slower than his was. Then there was the time that I got a CD-ROM drive for my computer (at that time those were considered a novelty). A while after he got the exact same multimedia kit that I had he admitted to crying after I got mine. Then we finally got a new computer (the old one couldn't handle the new software we wanted to use). He then told me that he doesn't think that we should make fun of each other's computers anymore. This is after he had spent about two years making fun of my old computer (for the record I never made fun of his computers). Then the last three times he was over at my house my new computer's hard drive mysteriously crashed. Then I developed an interest in photography. He suddenly had the same interest. That was fine except for the fact that he started trying to one-up me on the camera that I had. For instance, I got a Polaroid camera for Christmas and then he got a new Polaroid Captiva (are those around anymore? I've seen the film but not the camera). After a while I found an ad in the advertiser that had a very good deal on a used Polaroid Spectra camera which wasn't as new as the Captiva but it had a lot more features. A few months after I bought it I brought it to his Step-Father's birthday party which I had helped set up for (he had wanted me to take the pictures with my camera he didn't want to use his own). It now doesn't take pictures anymore. A while after that I got a really nice reconditioned 35MM camera. It had a bunch of features, a zoom lens, red eye reduction flash, among a lot of other things. I can't be sure that he did this, but after I showed him the camera and he looked at it the viewfinder (the thing you look through) would get blurry when you zoomed in and out. I had to take it into Ritz Camera to have it fixed (that is the actual place, think of this as revenge on Ritz). It took them six months to fix it. When I told him about this he didn't seem all that surprised, he even seemed to think that it was funny. But I guess it worked out for the best. Since Olympus didn't manufacture my camera anymore they gave me an updated model. John didn't seem to be too happy about that. The fact that he would crash my computer and break my camera (I may have no proof of this but who else could have done it?) should have been enough reason to end the friendship right there. But those weren't the only reasons. He was one of those people that constantly wanted to talk. It was really weird. About every half-hour the phone would ring and it would be him. Then, when I didn't want to talk, he would do various things. One time he pranked our house for two hours straight. First, he would call one line, then let it ring once, then he would call the second line and let it ring once, then the first, then the second and so on. Another time he threw his phone through the window and blamed me. Them he set it up so it looked like a shelf collapsed and fell through the window. Then he called me back up and told me that he had bailed me out of that one. Anyway, getting back to his obsession about getting revenge on Ms. May. The way he tried to get revenge on her was by taking pictures of her when ever he had the opportunity. Ms. May hated having her picture taken for obvious reasons. As I mentioned earlier she is a very unkempt and ugly person. I think that anyone looking like her would not want their picture taken for fear of breaking the camera.
About the time that he had stopped thinking that the picture was so funny the annual open house came around. So what did he do? He went and brought a camera. He then took her picture. Ms. May then took him aside and told him how it wasn't funny that he was doing that to her. After she finished he left and when he was safely out of range he started cracking up. At last this time he took it with an instant camera. That was he got the picture right away and didn't laugh as long as he did with the last picture. The third and final time he did it was at the annual school picnic. He got my nephew, we'll call him John Doe II, to take the picture this time. But there was one difference: it wasn't just one picture, it was many. John Doe I's mom drove him to the picnic while John Doe II rode his bike over. I remember John Doe I brought his mom's camera and gave it to John Doe II to use. John Doe II shot a whole role of film on Ms. May, yelling "Hey, you fat whore, show me those rolls!". When he came back, John Doe I had a while other role of film for him to shoot of Ms. May. I was watching from a safe distance, John Doe I was too (big surprise). The first picture that John took of Ms. May was funny, the second was kind of funny, and the third was not funny at all. The only thing that was kind of funny about it was the fact that John Doe II actually did it. However, to John Doe I it was the funniest thing on Earth, and what was worse was he wanted to do it again. I finally stopped talking to him when I was in eighth grade. I was glad I did until he started writing letters. At first I thought "Okay, maybe he'll just figure it out that I don't want anything more to do with him,". That wasn't the case, however. After a while he had written me two letters one of which stated that eh remembered about when my birthday was and was going to send me a check. My birthday came and went, no check, so I figured that he finally wised up to the fact that I didn't want anything more to do with him. Then about two months after my birthday I got a gift in the mail. It was a used King's Quest VII hint book. I figured that he probably sent that as a final test to see if I would talk to him and then probably leave me alone. So I just put the book on the shelf and forgot about it until a few months later. I got a letter from him again. The return address wasn't his, it was his mom's place of work, so I didn't know it was from him. When I opened it and saw it was from him I was tempted to throw it out right away, but instead I decided to read it and see what he had to say. This is what he wrote: I have been recommended for the following courses: Just thought I should tell you, you better hope you don't see me at the high school. I have told a few of my friends about you, and they don't like you either. Especially John Doe III who weighs 258 LBS. He told me that if he ever bumps into you, you're in trouble. I am afraid you mommy won't be able to protect you. So you better go do your "I am a prep" alter boy thing at St. Derek's and prey, because I am sorry to tell you but this is high school, and you're supposed to be all big and mighty but YOU are hardly anything below that level. Derek, you may have gone to high school before me, but you aren't anywhere near as smart as I am anymore. I am a lot smarter in both street smarts and education smarts. I am a lot stronger than before, so you don't want to tick me off. One more thing, since your mommy is also reading this tell her your a big boy now who doesn't need her protection, and she won't be able to save you from everything all you life. Derek, your life is ready to take off in a ZOOM. Don't you think it's about time you got one though (a life)? And when you're ready to go ut into the real world, and your mommy isn't there to protect you, you're going to look around and not know what's going on. Just remember, when I end up owning my own computer industry and you come begging me for a job, just remember what you did. Because I will have the last laugh!! Hopeful never to have to see or hear from you in high school
Anyway, I did what I had to do. I first showed it to my parents to see
what they thought I should do. First, my mom called John Doe's mom to tell
her what was going on. She was very embarrassed about what John did, and
was going to have a long talk with him. After she talked to John they both send apology letters to us. Mrs. Doe I said that she was extremely embarrassed about John's actions (I would be too), and she grounded him and took away his computer privileges. As for John's apology letter I don't think that t was all that sincere. To me it seemed more of a forced apology than anything else. Even though they sent those letters I still went to my guidance counselor and told him about what was going on. He brought in my dean and they both said that they would put us in separate lunch hours and make sure that we were in separate classes. I can't say how much of a relief that was. Even then I decided to look at other schools to see what my options were. I didn't want anyone to know about it. I think that the only people that knew that I was thinking about switching schools were the people in my second hour L.A.P. class, and a few other people outside of it. The reason that I didn't want that many people to know is because if John found out where I was going he could probably get his mom to let him go there and that would be a disaster. The school I was planning on going to was St. Weber's (did you think I would actually say on the Internet). I didn't want to go to Carmel because that would have been too obvious to him, and I don't think that he ever heard of St. Weber's at all (Gee no one has). Also my parents have been wanting to move up to Wisconsin for a long time and this was a great excuse to move. After I looked and compared the two schools, I decided that it would be in my best interests to stay. Mainly because it would be stupid to move just because of one person. That and the fact that I only knew one person in St. Weber's. I finally considered everything that had happened. I though about what
Upper Grade said when I told them about what he did. They seemed very surprised
because they had thought he was a quiet kid. And the kid that he mentioned
in the letter was also a quiet kid, which made me wonder if he really could
carry out with his threats. I finally just figured that there was no way
that he could. In conclusion, I would just like to say that a thing like this can ruin a person's trust for other people. In my case it took me a long time to easily trust another person. I still have trouble in that area. |
WOW! A novelette! Is this true? Although the paper has a rather large focus, it was very interesting and
flowed well. Be comma careful!
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