Friendly Fire

The first real friend I can remember having was Ronnie Richard ... he lived 4 houses up the street ... the house was adjacent to a large marshy wooded area .. and that was adjacent to a ball field ... we roamed miles through there ... fire seemed to be a big matter of study for us ... we tried to burn everything .. rubber .. plastic ... of course we had fire crackers .. they came in a braided pack .. you could either light the whole pack off .. or peek them one by one and fire them off singly ... we might have a dropped a few through some door mail slots .. memory fades .. 

I remember one time we were in the attic of his house and we had candles burning ... christ knows what we were up to .. the attic was full of dry wood and house was clapboard .. all wood .. if we had dropped those candles .. everything would have gone up in an instant inferno ... the landlord caught us in there and read us the riot act ... 

I remember another time we made matchstick guns out of clothes pins ... to the best of my recollection ... they ignited the matches when fired .. I remember playing with one kid who had a polyester jacket ... when he went home the jacket was simply a mass on 1 inch burn holes .. I assume he paid the price.

I have no sense of how the friendship started .. or even how long it lasted .. but it did have an end ... I had started playing with other neighbours kids closer to home ... we had run out of new adventures ... he came up to me one day .. and called me a traitor .. and slugged me in the jaw .. I was stunned by the action .. it wasn't that hard .. but it was delivered with passion for what we once had and now was lost ... 

There was another group of friends from the next block .. we used to play pickup baseball in the park across the street from their homes ... I loved the game .. this was hardball ... sometimes we would play in the regulation field beside the wooded area I made reference to earlier ... that was another crowd from deeper down City Line ... that was one sport I would have loved to play on an organized team ... I always regretted not doing it ... but I might not have been capable of being a team player so it might have ended badly ..

Playing with the neighbours kids closer to home was just about the time I had retreated into my head .. I was taller than they were .. I was older than they were .. 14? ... and I was probably not as mature as they were. We played street hockey and I basically used them for target practice .. their mothers complained that I was too rough and all that quickly came to an end ... I had no sense of consequences of actions ... drive a ball at somebody .. hit them in the face .. oh shit .. what did I do that?

By the time I went to High School in the fall of 1965 .. I had no friends ... I had burned through them all .. or maybe more appropriately ... I took from them what I could ... without establishing any sense of true friendship and companionship ... I was socially bankrupt ... I simply didn't know how to relate to anyone at all ... looking back I definitely had a personality disorder ... in fact when I read the symptoms for schizoid personality disorder ... and think about myself back then ... they are too bloody close for comfort for me not to be on that spectrum somewhere ... 

I met up with Ronnie about 15 years ago .. maybe less than that .. his father was still living but Alzheimers was having its way ... I never saw Ronnie after that .. we planned to get together for a BBQ .. he died of brain cancer I believe .. he deserved a better fate in life .. he deserved a better friend ...

Phil - 21 December 2020 - San Patricio de Melaque - 7:39 PM

Krome Koan - 'I don't suffer from insanity .. I love every second of it'