vii - Day 07 – Your best friend, in great detail

Another one that's gonna be a bit tough.  My experiences posting personal information online hasn't been terribly good, so naturally I'm a bit reluctant to post anything too concrete about the people closest to me.

It's one part respecting their privacy, but I also think there's a bit of feeling that I couldn't do justice to the essence of their beings with mere words.  Anyone that's met my best friend, the shiny-headed gentleman to the left, will understand what I mean by that.

So, where do we go now that I've admitted I can only paint a limited picture?  The beginning is as good as anywhere, I guess.  We met not long after my family moved from one city to another nearly 4 hours away.  It was in the second grade, though our friendship wouldn't really blossom until a little while later.

By the time we were in the 5th grade we'd become pretty much inseparable and found countless ways to get ourselves into trouble - with or without each other's help.  I recall one instance in grade school involving that well-rounded forehead and a double pane classroom window.  I wasn't there to witness the event proper, but rumour has it that upon being challenged, he felt he needed to prove his assertion that he could indeed put his head through the glass.  He was, it turns out, correct.  There was much excitement on the schoolyard that day.

We attended the same school - if not always the same class - until grade eight.  Our little French school in the middle of an English suburb had sizable classes of thirty or so students each, but only one class per grade.  Everyone knew everyone else, and the teachers had plenty of time to devote to each student...not that they necessarily paid particularly good attention.  Which, upon further consideration, may not have been a bad thing.  We weren't necessarily cruel to each other, but it's not like young boys are exactly the fountain of good ideas, either.

After that, though, we drifted in and out of touch for most of the nineties.  We attended different high schools, so even though there was still a lot of extra curricular hanging out, growing friendships in different cliques inevitably meant more time doing stuff with other people.  After high school, we did a half-year program together in video production, which was a tremendous amount of fun (I got to direct a low budget live interview show and a music video of sorts) but ultimately didn't lead anywhere.  After that I moved 4 hours away, ostensibly to pursue a career in the recording industry, that didn't pan out as expected, only to move home not long afterwards.  Then it was his turn to move to another city for a while.

We got back in touch while I was in university, and ended up being roommates.  We lived above a Scottish Pub.  I'll let you do the math: lifelong buddies, university aged, living on top of a place that served alcohol.  There were some pretty good times.  He eventually fell for a mutual friend, moved out, and not too long afterwards the pub got shut down, my girlfriend at the time and I got evicted and I found myself alone.  After a couple weeks at my folks' place, I got an apartment in the same building as he and his girlfriend, on the same floor, so we were almost roommates again.  Only this time I could lock the door and protect myself from his drunken bouts of sleepwalking.

I moved away again a few years later, but fortunately this time we were able to keep in touch.  We don't get much of a chance to get into trouble anymore, which is probably a good thing.  But thank goodness for that wonder that is the Internet.  I may not be able to talk him into doing ludicrous stunts on a skateboard anymore, but that doesn't mean I can't fill his inbox with various absurdities I come across while meandering through the web.