it's never too late

i had a friend in 3rd grade who we'll call "mark." mark had a developmental disability of some sort — i never learned what it was. it wasn't severe enough to necessitate his attending any special sort of school, but he did attend the remedial classes at our school. he had a slight speech impediment, nothing huge, and i specifically remember that his hands always sort of trembled a bit. i still don't know why i remember that detail. anyway, mark and i were friends in the same way all 8-year-old boys are friends — we pretended we were the six million dollar man and we made our action figures fly around the room and we just goofed around and laughed and learned. for one year. then i moved.

i actually moved a lot when i was a kid. by the time i finished high school, i'd attended 6 different schools. once it was because i was kicked out ("asked not to return" was the actual verbiage), but most of the time it was because of a move. sometimes it was easy, just a different district. sometimes it was more difficult, such as when my mom returned to NY to finish her master's degree and i had to go to school in an entirely different state. but the end result was that i was the new kid a LOT.

being the new kid isn't easy. you're alone, you're scared, and you're unfamiliar. as a result, you learn to adapt quickly. you learn how to get in with the right groups, you learn who to know, and you learn how to make a name for yourself. people tell me today, as an adult, that i've "never met a stranger," that i'm a great conversationalist, and that i'm fun to be around, and all of those things are a direct result of needing to get shit figured out fast after a move when i was a kid.

before 7th grade, we moved again, and when we did, i learned that my 7th grade was going to be in the same district that my 3rd grade was, which meant that despite going to a new school, i was going to know people. i wouldn't be alone. i wouldn't be lost or afraid. it was the only time i can think of in my entire scholastic experience in which i was actually excited to go to school on the first day.

mark was one of the people i saw again, of course, and we immediately became buddies again. but this was 7th grade now. we were 12, and being "cool" was now a factor. at least to me. and despite this particular move being easy for me, it was still my 3rd move and my 4th school — i was learning the game. and the game was to be accepted. so i started to try and straddle the fence — i distanced myself from mark a little bit, in favor of trying to get in with the "cool" crew, but i tried to maintain a relationship with mark because deep down, i genuinely liked the guy, i sympathized with him, and i was one of the few friends he had.

one day, some of the boys were teasing mark. nothing huge, playing keep-away with his notebook, calling him some names — nothing crippling, just boy stuff. but here's where it all changed. i joined in. i knew that very second that what i'd done was wrong on so many levels. i felt … cruel. i could see the feelings of betrayal in mark's eyes. i knew nothing would be the same again. i knew i'd chosen my route and my route felt wrong. i tried to continue straddling that fence, but i knew something had changed with mark and i — he didn't treat me the same or communicate the same way with me. i felt awful every single day. i knew that because of mark's disability, he very probably didn't even understand why i did what i did, and that made it even worse.

i moved again the next year, and because i still harbored such deep self-loathing about that moment, i swore i would never do anything like it again (to this day, at 40 years old, i never have — i am an incredibly loyal friend). but somewhere in my mind, a terrible little seed had been planted. this seed grew into a deep emotional thorn. for my entire life — from teenager to young adult to adult — i would have crippling nightmares about mark. a couple times a year at least, i would wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes crying, feeling like i was back there again in my 12-year-old body betraying my confused friend.

one day when i was 30-something, i decided i needed to make amends, and i sought mark out. it wasn't easy going at all. i tried the local phone directories from where we grew up, i googled his name, i got in touch with our old schools, nothing. for a year i tried to find the guy and was actually starting to look into private investigators when i came across the classmates(dot)com website. a PI was going to be way more expensive than their 3-month trial membership, so i signed up and lo and behold, i fucking found him.

at first i didn't even know if he'd remember me. i sent him an email through the service, telling him my name, the two years we'd been schoolmates, and some of the things we used to like to do together. sure enough, he remembered me. after another email of niceties and light reconnection, i told him the reason i'd tracked him down — that for almost 23 years (at that time), i'd felt regret about that moment when i teased him just to fit in. that i had genuinely liked him when we were boys, that my desperate need to be accepted overpowered my better judgement, that my friendship had been real and that moment of weakness had not been "me." i spilled it all. i begged for his forgiveness, not even knowing if he'd remember the moment or if he'd tell me to go fuck myself when reminded of it. and the most amazing thing happened — he said that he did remember and that he had forgiven me for it almost immediately. he said that the things we do when we're young are just kid stuff, they don't mean anything. he said mistakes are mistakes. he said it was just good to be in touch again and that i had nothing to worry about.

i fucking lost it, just totally broke down in tears. here was a man who grew up with a legitimate, actual disability. a man who'd actually had to overcome roadblocks. a man who'd had more struggles than i ever had, have, or very probably ever will have. he wasn't just some yutz who had to move a few times and made a big fucking whiny deal about it. and he'd found a way through and past that awful moment years before i had. he never suffered 23 years of nightmares and self-loathing. he had, unlike me, figured out the game a looong time ago. i was floored, touched, relieved, and a whole slew of other emotions that flooded through me like a wave.

mark and i talked several more times after that. he has a job at a shipping company that he likes very much. he likes to read and watch movies and spend time with his family. he has hopes of traveling to some places. he's a very simple man who's very happy.

eventually, we drifted apart again, but it wasn't because of betrayal or pain, it was just because we were guys in our mid-30s who were friends for a short time as young boys but who now had vastly different lives and interests. there was no pain in it. it was totally natural. and i never had another nightmare about it again. when i die, i won't slip off into the black with a decades-old regret. i won't fear that i damaged someone irreparably and panic that i never tried to make it right. i'll know that the game isn't as complicated as i made it. and i'll always cherish my brief friendship with mark.