The summer after my
first year in junior high I wanted to spend a lot of time with my new
Payson friends because they were worldly and all kinds of cool. We
had our budding relationship hamstringed by a lack of non-parental
transportation. Living six miles away meant the play time had to be
planned and scheduled and not a drop in kind of thing that kids need
for friendship to thrive. Missing out on what I imagined was pretty
much limitless fun and debauchery by my unfortunate mechanical
separation was not a easy thing for my FOMO (fear of missing out)
neurosis. In lieu of those friends I started hanging out with a
couple of guys who were two years older than me. A couple of cousins
named Nathan and Ryan who I mentioned in the story about Ryan getting
stomped out. I was originally Ryan's little brothers friend but by
this time I had not hung out with him in a few years and had made the
transition up the the family tree. They were pretty cool kids and
they thought I had lots of cool projects and opportunities for
mischief available so they were along for the ride. Nathan was
actually the older brother of the girl my sister tricked me into
saying that I wanted to have sex with. That didn't seem to make him
like me less and that was good. We spent most of our time riding
bikes, fishing and trying to find some girls to talk to in person or
on the phone. We had some really good times but they were in high
school and I was in junior high so as the summer came to a close we
parted amicability and except for a few camping trips with the scouts
and getting in fights with some other kids at church basketball never
really did much more together after that. Friendly yes, friends no.
