Idiot - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/11/enemies

When talking about friendships that went down the drain and not really knowing the exact details of them, I've got me one of them!

There's a lot to this story, and some of it gets weird, and fuzzy in my mind, so I'll try to tell it as best as I can remember it.

Spencer and I were best friends while growing up. This is to the point that in some of my earliest birthday pictures, in the crowd is Spencer sitting next to me, or at least pretty close. He was always part of my life, but the thing with Spencer was that due to birthdays we were a year apart in school. My birthday was in march, his in the fall, and so he was a year behind me in school, but that never really stopped us from hanging out and getting in trouble. The weird part about it, because of where we lived and the way school lines were drawn, we were never actually in the same school together. Part of me thinks that things could be completly different had we been in the same school, part of me thinks that I could have reigned him in a bit because I could do that.

You see, when we finally hit puberty Spencer was a huge kid. There are fat kids, there are 'big boned' kids, but he was 6'1 or 6'2, broad shoulders, big chest, and just a huge kid. The thing was, that he had the brains to match the burly jock exterior. Meanwhile I was 6'1, and 150 pounds on a fat day and super nerdy. I was nerdy to the point that I went to nationals for a science competition, and in one of them actually placed decently well. I don't know what it was, but when we were together, I got him to calm down and think, the problem was that when I wasn't there, when I couldn't get him to think straight, he'd idiot out and make poor, rash, choices.

For example - we were in the same boyscout troop. One summer I didn't go to scout camp because I had a summer job lifeguarding. He decided that it was a good idea on this week long camping and hiking trek to bring two pairs of boxing gloves and have boxing matches every night without the leaders knowing what was going on. Violence and stupidity were his go to answers. Around me, he'd actually do something bigger with his life. On his own, physical violence worked for him. Around me, he wanted to become a chiropractor. On his own bruises were a common thing. Around me, he'd at least sit down and try to think about the bad choices that other people around him were making, like his brother.

It wasn't until my first year of college that Idiot gained his name. It was his senior year in high school, no one was there to call him out on his stupidity that he would actually listen to, and stupid things happened. A series of stupid comments, and stupid actions got him the nickname behind his back of "Idiot".

I came back for one summer between college and my mission and things had gone from best friends to me not being able to stand being in the same room as him. Then I went on my mission. In the first 9 weeks of being gone, I got a letter from his parents wondering if I knew where he had disappeared to, I didn't. He bounced around the country, and even did a trip to Africa, and did nothing with his life.

Then came the letter. Out of the blue, without talking to him much, he sent me this letter telling me that everything I had done was wrong, that he never agreed with anything that we had grown up learning in church, and that he was through with it. After that, we didn't talk, and really I haven't said more than a dozen words to him since then. We went our separate ways, but then things got weird because he got married, straightened out his life, and even got back into going to church. . . but he never really did anything that he was planning on. Part of me really wants to sit down and figure out what in the world happened to him and at least get on the same page again so we can be facebook friends, but there's been too many burned bridges and it's been too long of doing our own separate things that I really doubt that there will ever be a time that Spencer and Adam will be Spencer and Adam again.