A friend of mine was on the front page for heroin smuggling today...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Oh boy. I knew this guy was going to get it sooner or later. I’m not going to link to the news story (the local paper requires a subscription anyway) but just trust me.

I was friends with him in elementary school and in seventh grade. His dad is an army scientist, and the family was transferred to Korea after the seventh grade, where he lived for the next four years. I almost forgot about him, and then he came back to town for our senior year of high school.

As soon as I saw him in the hallway for the first time, I knew he was a different guy. He carried himself like a thug, dressed like a thug, talked like a thug, and, although I hate to say it, he seemed like his brain was kind of fried. This really surprised me, because as a kid he was very well-behaved and polite. Blonde haired, blue eyed, and looked like an all-American kid. Now he looks like a burned out ghost.

We began talking and catching up, and I was pretty shocked by some of the stuff he said. He regaled me with stories of shoplifting, gang fights (he claimed to have been a member of a gang of miscreant army brats,) and vandalism. He also claimed to have smuggled drugs through airport security inside hollowed candles, on numerous occasions. This was a far cry from the guy I knew as a kid.

After hearing these stories, and seeing his behavior, I became a little less enthusiastic about reuniting with my long-lost buddy. I was kind of relieved when he said he was going back to Korea after graduation. However, as it turned out, he stayed in town. I recieved periodic phone calls from him asking, very nicely and quite sincerely, to hang out, but I gave him excuses every time. I do feel guilty about this. The guy had NO friends in town when he came back, I was basically the only person he knew who had stuck around after high school, and he was obviously lonely and alienated. But, quite frankly, he gave me the creeps.

And now, he’s on the front page of the paper, top story - nailed with a kilo of heroin. Probably going away for a while. I can’t imagine how disappointed his father must be. I really feel sorry for this guy - he had potential, once, was a good kid and could have had a good future. I really hope he can find some way of turning himself around, but i’ve got this sick feeling that he’s on a one-way street now.

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I had a friend like this, too, about the same time in life as well. We hit it off well in 7th grade. He was a good friend, and just the kind of person to pull me out of my shell and do constructive things (like yardwork, odd jobs, freelancing on the neigborhood garbage truck). But then things started to change. His family moved away in 9th grade, and came back sometime during 10th grade, and started telling me about his binge drinking (with no hangover) experiences while away. By the time we graduated, he was into pot, PCP, some LSD, lots of alcohol…

Fastforward about 18 years when I moved back to town from college and starting a family. I eventually found out that he had killed himself at age 33. He never held down a real job, and I think had given up on the world because he felt that it had given up on him sometime after high school.

Some people make decisions about how the world is and how they fit into it (or not), and then spend a lot of time drifting along that line of assumptions, not wanting to take a critical look at their perceptions or resulting actions. I think it’s a way of avoiding responsibility, and there isn’t much one can do to change them. It’s sad to see friends go down the tubes, but that prissy, goody-two shoes attitude my parents didn’t discourage is what kept me out of situations and decisions that would have drug me down with my friend (perhaps not to the bottom, but to places I didn’t/don’t want to go). It’s bewildering to see just how divergent friends can become, but it highlights the personality differences and environment you both grew up in.

Vlad/Igor