When I was 10 I made friends with a kid who lived a few blocks down
the road from me and he was crazy mean. He was always right on the
edge of escalating any situation turn violent. That sounds straight
forward but it was not. For example, we were walking home from school
one day and we were talking about building on the fort and out of the
blue he told me to look up in the sky at something I did and as soon
as my throat was exposed he karate chopped it as hard as he could. If
you have never been struck hard in the throat you may not know that
it is spectacularly painful, but not in a good way. I was writhing
around on the ground trying to breathe Justin was standing there
laughing saying I never saw it coming and I looked hilarious when I
got hit and dropped to the ground. You would think this type of
randomly violent behavior would be a friendship deal breaker but I
was so desperately nerdy and such a social pariah that it was Justin
or being friendless. Many of my inventions and building projects required two people so I had to have a friend. The inventions needed to be tested too. He was also a hard worker and shared many of my
interests. We both loved fishing, camping and building forts so when
he was not doing something completely insanely violent he was a
really good friend. Besides hanging out with Justin I was also
friends with his older brother and his cousin who were both a year
older than us and worked with us on many projects, so I don't want to
give the impression that I was in a completely abusive friendship we
had a lot of fun when he wasn't trying to kill me.
