*SIGH*

The history in a nutshell is that I was in the same elementary school grade year for 8 years… from 1st through 8th… with a certain individual.  As with most of my elementary school associates… well… they were just that, associates and not friends.  There were eight years of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of that group… and very few moments (come to think of it, only one moment in all that time) that make me smile when thinking about my time there.  When High School time came I gladly left them going in one direction while I went in my own.

Of course, this person wasn’t truly removed from my existence.  That summer we both began working at the rectory of our church/elementary school.  He would work there for 3 years… and I would be there for 7 years after he left.  We didn’t often see or talk to one another… only occasionally during the major holy days of the faithfully observant CAPE Catholics (Christmas, Ashes, Palms, Easter) did we work together.  The relationship was civil at best.

Of course, in High School I was a bit lost in finding myself.  The journey and transformation I made there was, for lack of a better term, evolutionary.  Unfortunately, after 2 years of failing Math and Spanish, and a final act of defiance 5 days before the end of my sophmore year by inciting a riot in the school against the man who was holding 4 fellow schoolmates (seniors) on hallowed charges when all they were doing was attempting to save the empire, truly sealed my fate for the following year.

That summer, after my mother went to this school in tears out of fear of me having to attend a sub-standard public school, I went to summer school at the High School I would eventually call my alma mater.  Let me be clear about this… I really could have cared less for that school.  Its reputation was and still is for shit.  It was the school where honor roll reading was The Little Engine That Could… without pictures!  Yeah.  They didn’t impress my bloated 15 year old ego.

Amazingly… he was there too.  I think we shared the Math class together.  We had both become somewhat refugees in this foreign environment… of which we both viewed it as being not worthy of our obviously superior, summer school needing, intellect.  So we became a bit friendlier and socialized a bit more… most notably in the lunchroom. 

Of course… as expected… that January there was a “glitch”.  We had agreed to swap days at work… and while I worked his day, he decided to tell a third worker in the office that he wasn’t going to be working mine.  So I called him the night before about it… and he started yelling at me about how I was interrupting him with a girl and blah blah blah.  Needless to say… I was pissed… and I cancelled my own plans and worked my shift.

Things shifted that Monday in the cafeteria, as I was no longer “welcome” to sit with him and a few new friends he had made.  So… I sat at a table in the middle alone.  Now don’t go feeling bad for me… because that lasted 3 days before I got pulled into a table of football players by this one guy Jugghead.  To be honest… I really used to hate jocks… but those three guys went out of their way to make me feel welcome and not so alone… and yeah… I helped them pass English… but they didn’t know I came from a school where the Freshman curriculum was the exact same as the current Junior curriculum.  So… literally… I have not spoken to this person nor been on speaking terms with him since that day.

*SIGH*

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Yesterday I joined a group on Facebook for my old High School class.  I really didn’t think anything of it… just clicked it in mindlessness while trying to level up in Mob Wars.  Two hours later I had a new friend request.  Anyone want to guess who it was from?  Yep… this person I haven’t spoken to since that day back in 1991.  It has been 17 years… and my first instinct was to hit the Ignore button.

But how long can you hold a grudge or be bitter with someone for?  Is there any point where it’s just being petty?  I mean c’mon… it is just Facebook we’re talking about… or is it?

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