There was a boy down the road that was my age but he was a spoiled
brat. He was clean and fussy and organized and not the sort of folk
that we had congress with. Matt and I were friends with many of the
kids in the neighborhood but Keven and his brother were always right
off the list. They were not allowed to come to our house if their
were no parents around because it was not safe. Kevin and his parents
obviously missed the critical life lesson that the less safe
something is the more fun it is. One of my regular neighborhood
friends was starting to hang out with Kevin because he had all kinds
of really good toys. We are talking rich kid stuff here, G.I. Joes,
He-Persons, and the purchasable set pieces like bases and such. The
only toys we had were by the piece and generally altered, I mean some
really great after-market customizations that were lost on those
plebeian sons of Santaquin. Our commodity was chaos and adventure,
that was not the tribe Keven had been raised in so we had mutually
exclusive and somewhat hostile camps of friends. So when one of my
good friends started dabbling I felt like it was a threat and wanted
to bring Kevin down. Anytime my friend would mention Kevin I would
mention in passing some subtle jab at his character. Something like,
'I think Kevin is a stuck up snotty piece of crap.' Subtle stuff to
sow seeds of doubt. My mom heard me constantly taking whacks at poor
little Kevin and told me to be nice to him. Well that is when the
awkward happened and Kevin called to see if I could come over to his
house and play. I asked my mom if I could go and she said, 'I thought
you said that Kevin was stuck up and you hated him.' What? When? You
are crazy mom. She said I could go, I walked down to his house and
immediately knew I was in the wrong sort of place when they made me
take off my shoes when I came in the door. At that point in my life I
had never been in a home that required this kind of protocol so I
was embarrassed about the mismatched state of my socks. I feel it should
be common courtesy to warn someone before they come over if you are
shoe-taking-offer household. We went down to Kevin's room that looked
like a toy store because he like to keep many of his toy's posed
either in there original boxes of in front of them. I had always been
impatient and would rip open a toy I had bought on the way from the
store to the car. The only problem was he wouldn't play with them or
even let me hold them and that is what I felt toys were for. He
suggested we play some Atari. He had the console and the TV in his
own room and now we were warming up to some common ground, a video
game will bridge the gap nicely. He had the controllers disconnected
and in another box which he unboxed but to my confusion only got out
one of the controllers. He put in a game and inserted his controller
and I asked why he didn't get out the other one and he told me it was
because he didn't want other people to play because they did it wrong
and the might mess it up but I could watch him play. Which I did for
a lack of dignity that still stings to this day I should have told
him to piss right off and headed home but I stayed and watched him
play for almost an hour. Then he told me I had to go home, and I did.
I never went back to Kevin’s house even though he invited me
several times but I did ease up on insulting him behind his back. It
is just simple logic that a guy who would want me for a friend is at
minimum a superior judge of character. They moved away in a couple
of years and I ran into Kevin years later in high school debate and
beat him soundly.
