10. Friendship: Write about being friends with someone.

friendship. it's a strange thing for me. in many respects, i don't understand it. i don't understand how it starts, or how it persists, or how/why it ends.

my first real friend (outside of my own family) was kendall fick. i can't quite remember how we met. we both attended mililani uka elementary together, and i suppose that we were in the same class or something, but i can't recall exactly how our friendship started. but in any case, he was the first friend to invite me over to his house. i recall one day, playing in his garage with a hot wheels set, even though it was raining hard just beyond. kendall moved away in the second or third grade, and for a while, i didn't have that friend to play with (as it turns out, good friends leaving was to be a recurring theme in my life). somehow, though, we stayed in touch. every now and then, he would invite me to stay over at his house in town. i used to be so excited to go there, and thought it was so cool to live in an apartment in town (the sound of the freeway rushing by made me think that there was always something going on there... nowadays, i've come to appreciate silence). kendall lived in a variety of places, from the sovereign (an apartment building near central union church, with round holes in the concrete walls at the bottom floor), to this distinctive building near the kinau offramp that had brown awnings (?) on the railings, to a small house nearby a park abutting a cliff. i also had the opportunity to stay over with him at his dad's place in salt lake (his parents divorced at some point).

the great thing about kendall was that he always tried to remain positive. i didn't know it at the time, but he had encountered some bullying when he went to the first school after mililani uka. i also discovered that his parents divorced at some point. he never really talked much about it, and i was too naive and selfish to even bring the topic up. in any case, kendall opened up worlds to me. an avid reader, he introduced me to a lot of the fantasy series that i was to fall in love with. he also liked to write, and for a time, we traded stories back and forth...

i think during high school we had a sort of falling out. or at least we didn't correspond much with each other. i believe it happened sometime during my sophomore year in high school. that was a difficult time for me, i think. by high school, kendall had definitely cultivated friendships with his private school classmates. they shared far more in common with kendall than i, who was only an occasional visitor. i recall one day when the two of us went over to a track meet at punahou. i had already endured a season of track and cross country at my high school, and had quit (dramatically) by the end of my sophomore year. i didn't like competing period. but anyway, i was with kendall, and decided to run with him in the 200 m. needless to say, i sucked big time. and it was that feeling, that sense that i was no longer in the same league, that truly isolated me from him. we didn't talk much (or at all) after that. in fact, i think it was only facebook which brought us back into contact many many years later.

***

at about the sixth grade or so, i developed good friendships with a few kids at mililani uka. they were to be my first "group." three of them happened to live very close to each other, in their own culdesac, in fact, and i always felt jealous of them for their proximity to each other. it seemed that any time any one of them wanted to, they could just walk over to each other's house, whereas i lived halfway across town. every time i wanted to hang out, i would have to ride my bike a long distance over there...

anyway, the three friends were greg fastabend, brian mahoney, and ed lau. all smart, in their own ways. soon, when we went to wheeler intermediate, we developed more friendships with the military nerds: clifton oyamot, and others. we were to become the "nerds" of the school, occupying a corner of f-building.

people teased us all the time. in retrospect, i have to say that at times we deserved the appellations thrown at us (nerds). but in any case, it really felt like we were not socially acceptable...

i don't know. i'm not willing to recount all my friendships right now.

***

suffice it to say that i'm probably not a particularly friendly or thoughtful person. people seem to think that i am, but in truth, i really am not. i don't know how to get close to people, and i'm not particularly thoughtful in the way that really thoughtful people are. i'm polite, certainly, but i'm not really kind. i don't, for instance, pay attention enough to know the likes or dislikes of people, and because of that, most of my "good deeds" happen to be pretty vague and nonspecific. i don't know why i'm like that. i just am.

i also don't really fight for friendship when it seems things take a bad turn. i just sort of accept it and move on. again, i don't know why i'm like that. it seems really unsympathetic of me.

at the same time, i hate being alone. being alone seems so pointless. or rather, it makes existence pointless. so much of my life was spent (wasted) in isolation, with me longing for someone to accompany me, to befriend me. but i never made overtures. i really couldn't. i never felt like i had much (or anything) to offer anyone. i just had this deep deep sadness.

i've used this metaphor to describe the nature of some of my friendships. i've imagined my friends as being distant figures on other mesas. i couldn't reach them, but i could see them, and maybe communicate with them in a rudimentary sort of way. and we existed in parallel, perhaps under the same sky. but we weren't close. we didn't really share anything beyond a sort of proximity.

it's sad to think of things like this, but i feel it's true. it makes me hate myself, but hate doesn't really change facts. i think having this stone heart somewhat motivates me to try and pretend to be kind, but it's a lot of work, and at times, i get so numbed out by it that i just wallow in my own introspection.

i like to hope that with my wife lynn, that things have changed about me. and i think i do care about her, and my children, and my students, in deeper and truer ways than would have been possible before. i, for example, wouldn't hesitate to have myself killed, if it meant saving them. but somehow that's not true love, or true caring... and in an analogous way, the friendships i still have, they aren't true either.

maybe i'm being hard on myself, but that seems to be the prevailing opinion i have of myself nowadays. again, i wish it were different. but wishing doesn't change facts either.