Sunday, December 31st 2006

My good friend Aimie and I recently met up with an old high school acquaintance of ours named Nathan. Nathan treated both of us and countless others pretty badly when we were younger. He was an asshole, a big jerk who bullied the boys and harassed the girls. He used to come up and act as if he was going to punch you, he wouldn’t and then said, “Two for flinching” and punch you twice really hard.

There was one boy who for the entire half of 7th grade wore a black and blue mark on his right shoulder; he was a favorite target of Nathan. I managed to dodge Nathan by keeping a look out for him and cutting class or taking alternate routes to the bus at the end of the day. I still got my fair share of torment that stuck with me for a long time. Those years were awful for me and he was 65% of the problem.

As I write this I remember that Nathan had done this to Aimie in some twisted courtship. When her mom saw the punishment for flinching she called in the police thus introducing all of us to the chief of police for our city.

The police chief turned out to be a very good friend of my family. My parents would often make him dinner when he would come round looking for me or to tell mom and dad of my most recent criminal endeavors.

At any rate, Aimie had seen Nathan out and began to speak to him socially. At first I was mad that she would even look in his direction, but then remembered that was long ago and he might have changed, maybe, Aimie said he had and I trust her opinion.

All things aside, I’ve come pretty far from the little blue-haired pothead in high school. I wanted to meet him and show off a bit, but also secretly desired an apology. I had forgiven him, I really had, but it still does not excuse him from what he did. He apologized, very sincerely I might add, and we caught up on our years past. We talked about where we ended up, where we lived and what we were doing for a living. I spent a good 15 minutes talking to him about that one. So all in all it was nice to tie up that loose end. We finished our Amarone, gave him a hug, shook his hand and wished him well.

A toast to forgiveness and making amends in the New Year!

This entry was posted by Johnny on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 5:53 PM and is filed under Ancient History, Friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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