Me and Johnny

A couple months ago somebody wrote me an email and asked me a whole bunch of questions. One of those questions was about how Johnny and I had become friends because ever since my “ass kicking Johnny” post people have always been a little curious to learn how we became buds. Now that I am spending the next 3 weeks here in Las Vegas with him, and I can't seem to fall asleep, I think I can spare the time to tell that story.

Johnny and I have known each other since we were 7, but we didn't become friends until well after I turned 13. Johnny is actually one of the very few friends that I have that is my age. We never really had much interaction with each other in school because we were in separate grades, but we did see a lot of each other in martial arts classes. So beside his name, and the fact that he was a very good fighter, I never really took the time to learn anything else about him. That all changed the summer of 1998.

The year preceding 98 I was getting into a lot of trouble. I was a very angry kid acting out against my parents by staying out all night, defacing public property, and drinking on a regular basis. By the time that summer came along I had been arrested 6 times for a plethora of reasons all of which I was extremely guilty of, but due to my stellar scholastic achievements as well as my Varsity extracurriculars, not to mention my very rich dad, I kept getting passes.

Finally all parties involved had had enough and they decided that I needed a reality check. So the juvenile court judge sentenced me to 6 months of incarceration at a juvenile detention facility that was to be reduced to 2 months with one year of probation so I could conveniently be incarcerated in the summer months where it wouldn't effect my schooling or my sports schedule. Looking back it's almost comical the way they basically bent backwards to accommodate me and make sure there were no real inconveniences to me or my life. From sealing my records so it wouldn't effect my varsity status, to letting me out in time for my academic decathlon summer training session the week before school started.

I noticed Johnny the very first day in “juvenile detention”. I walked right up to him and started a conversation, I don't even remember what it was about, but from that moment on we were best friends. That summer bonded us in such a deep and uniquely personal way that I will never be able to fully express with words of how grateful I am for the experience. In general, I look back at juvenile detention with fondness and view it as a very positive time. We went to group therapy sessions together where we learned each other's life stories and we discovered that we both came from a very similar fucked up family life. We cried, grew, and learned together, and by the end we weren't even close to the people we came into this situation being.

The one thing about my summer incarceration that I remember even more than Johnny was how Tyler and Mrs. Tyler visited me more than my own parents. I remember before I left to serve my time, Tyler was practically in tears because he was so scared something bad was going to happen to me. My entire life he was the guy that had my back in any and every difficult or socially awkward situation I had ever been in, but now he couldn't help me. He swore to me he'd be there every visiting day no matter what, and he was. After he found out that I'd found somebody that I have known for years there with me and we were now good friends, our visits even took on a fun and lighthearted mood that had been lacking the first few weeks.

Johnny finished serving his time a week before I did, and that last week without him was the first time during my entire incarceration where I actually felt like I was being punished. To this day, that was probably one of the longest weeks in my life. After I got out, Johnny and I got together a few times and we had problems clicking like we had before. We were in different grades, at different schools, and we lived in different cities, so we really had to struggle at first to maintain our friendship.

I can't really remember the point where it stopped being awkward and everything just fell into place, but eventually it did happen. And I know that I am luckier than any other man on the planet because of our friendship. More than Tyler, or even Bradley, Johnny and I can relate to each other like nobody else can, and it has nothing to do with being incarcerated together. Johnny knows what it's like to come from a home with an abusive parent, he knows what it feels like to be the oldest sibling doing everything he could to protect the ones he loves. He knows what it feels like to break under all that pressure and just want to die for not being able to be strong enough. I love him as much as I love Tyler, and I love them both as much as I love my 2 blood related brothers.

Matt, I just had an epiphany that I am now sharing with you as well as all my readers. I am not going to lie, your last post made me really sad for more reasons than I really even understood after first reading it. Whether you are talking about friendships or relationships, you can't expect to ever be everything to any one single person. Like parfaits, onions, and ogres, we all have layers. The goal in life isn't to find a person that can't live without you, but to find people that YOU could never live without! If Brad, Tyler, or Johnny ever asked me to choose just one of them over the rest, I'd probably die because I can't imagine my life without all of them in it. I have never been jealous or worried about them replacing me with somebody else because at the end of the day just knowing that I would be there for them when they needed me has always been enough. When I was in jail Tyler wasn't jealous for a second that I had made a friend that in essence had replaced him, he was happy I wasn't alone, and to me that's what friendship is. That's why your opening statement really bothers me so much! Anybody who tries to marginalize you as a person isn't really your friend, but at the same time investing in a friendship only to see what you can get out of it isn't a real friendship either. I don't know if I am anybody's favorite person, and I don't know if I am the one guy any of my friends would choose if forced to make that decision (because these are not questions I have ever really asked myself); but what I do know is I need them, and that's enough for me.