Lost childhood friends

I had a few friends in the neighborhood. There was Sam. He had a younger brother Daniel and an older brother named Brian (I think). Brian killed himself after Sam and I lost our friendship (I will get into that later) and I moved away. Sam's dad was awesome or so I thought. His mother was a nightmare. I never saw so much anger in a woman. If she wasn't yelling, she had a miserable look on her face. Sam had a pool and he also had a small clubhouse that his dad built for him. I loved going in there. It is one of the only places I wish I could go back and visit from my childhood. We traded baseball cards and played with GI Joes and had gun fights all in and around that clubhouse.

Mike lived across the alley from Sam and was easily my best friend until our friendship died. He was the only person I knew who had a computer. We used to play this late eighties football game on his computer all the time. We also used to have some amazing wiffle ball games outside Mike's house. Christ knows how many balls we lost in the neighbor's drain pipes. Mike's dad was a single father. Mike had two sisters that were both older than Mike. My earliest sexual experiences seemed to center around my friendship with Mike. We both found a playboy magazine in a garbage can in the local cemetery. We had tapped a Philadelphia Eagles playoff game and when we sat down to watch it once, halfway through it a porno had been taped over it, apparently from his dad. The last sexual experience was when one of Mike's sisters was laying on the couch with her boyfriend. They were under a blanket and he was humping her and she seemed to be enjoying it. I still don't know if it was just a dry hump or actual sex but at 8 or so, I didn't know.

Mike's neighbors were brothers about our same age. Chris and Scott. They had a Nintendo and then later a Sega Genesis and then even later a Sega CD. They had a step father just like me but he was actually pretty decent from what I can gather. He would actually take time and play video games with us. I remember staying over their house a few times to just play Bases Loaded with him. They were okay at first and then played a major part in my friendships with these people to be destroyed.

There was a kid up the road from all us named Mark. He was quit and angry. He once made me stand on a rusty nail and it went through my foot and laughed at me as I stumbled home. He started making fun of me around my back and in my face for being forced to go to church and going to private school. When I was in 5th grade, we had a pretty decent size snow storm. Mark, Sam, Scott, Chris, Mike and I got together to play football in the snow on the street. My sister came up the road later and we started to have a snowball fight. I told everyone to not hit my sister in the face because she had just gotten new glasses. Mark told Scott to make a snowball and throw it at my sisters face and that is what he did. She grabbed her face and screamed. I grabbed Scott and started to beat the shit out of him. Chris threw me off of him and Mark stood and laughed. Sam and Mike stood back and sat down. Things were never the same after that.

Mark was at the center of all the hazing and hatred that would follow for the next few years. Those next few years sucked a lot. I was going through puberty and was dealing with with a ton of changes with school and friends. I would walk my dog Abner just about every night and all of my former friends would either sit outside Mikes or in Sam's yard and insult me. A few times they got in my face and tried to fight me. Once, they shot a BB gun at my face. They tried to befriend me once after that but it was just a ploy to steal baseball cards from me. My mom got them back for me. I gained a ton of weight during those years and weight I wouldn't lose until I turned 16 or so.

I never connected again with those guys. All of them still live in Easton and at least one of them in South Side. Sam had two kids with a girl I used to work with. Mike also had two kids. I don't know about the others other than they live in Easton still.

"All of the worst enemies are somehow always friends that used to be..." Boy Sets Fire - My Life In The Knife Trade.