happy
When I was at that age where every house hid a Boo Radley, you couldn't pass a stick or rock without picking it up, and having to go to bed before the sunlight had fully disappeared represented life’s great tragedy, I had two best friends. And they hated each other. It was like having two girlfriends. This is where I learned scheduling, where my post-nascent brain circuitry began to resemble the hardwiring now found in most palm pilots. Because I could not afford to get caught hanging out with one if the other might show up. They might break into fisticuffs.
Or worse, yet. Become best friends themselves.
* * *
In college, I am the friend on the outer orbit. I get along swimmingly with a chap from work. We engage in witty banter and illicit activities. He’s a cool dude.
He has a friend. A guy I like from a distance, but never really meet. I ask about him one day, to see if he’s coming on a float trip down the river with the rest of us.
‘Nah.’
‘You should ask him.’
‘He knows. He doesn’t want to come.’
‘I guess he doesn’t like you all that much,’ I joke.
‘It’s you he doesn’t like. That’s why he’s not coming.’
/sound of record* scratching to halt
(*records were flat discs, often made of black vinyl, used as audio media in the 20th century)
Do you know what it feels like to find out that someone doesn’t like you? Of course you don’t, no one could possibly share this pain with me. In history, there are three men, all of whom have first names that begin with the letter ‘J,’ who serve as humanity’s pin cushions of pain and ultimate suffering. Job, from the Old Testament, Jesus, from the New, and me, from some Addendum as yet to be written, but when it is I will assume my pre-destined name, which will surely begin with the letter ‘J,’ for I suffered on that day, lo, how I suffered greatly and despairingly.
'He doesn't LIKE me?'
’No.’
’But I like him! I think he's funny!’
’Meh. Some people just don't get along.’
’But he likes you! And you like me! You like me, right? Hey, tell me you like me!’
’Dude.’
* * *
Fortunately, all of us grew up in the past, and we all even more fortunately live in the future, which is now, and the 21st century is the Social Network Age. And most fortunately of all, broadband has broken those barriers that kept us from all being friends. We’re all friends, now. Everyone you link to likes me. And everyone I link to likes you.
‘Please do not burst this one, final bubble of mine.’
‘Admit it. Some people, even isolating for political, racial or moral differences, just aren't meant to get along.’
‘No, I won’t admit it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past several Trials of the Century, it’s that you should never admit to anything.’
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