[legion]

In middle school and early high school, there were three of us that did everything together: Me, Bob, and Griffin.

Griffin got thrown out by his raging alcoholic/coke-head mom sophomore year (1994) of high school (through no fault of his own) and moved in with his dad in North Carolina. Didn't see/hear from him until...

Fast forward to 2002. Griffin comes back and moves in with his mom again. A little weird, because at 22 he should have been somewhat independent. Bob, Griffin, and I went out drinking one night and had a good time. A few weeks later, I'm up in Naperville at my parent's house and he calls me up to come over and hang out.

I go over and he's playing some new video game he just bought. Now, when we were in middle school/high school, he was always the kid who got the new video game the day it came out. We'd watch him play it for hours while we would patiently wait for a turn to play it ourselves, which might never come...

So after half an hour of watching Griffin play this video game, I left. He wanted me to watch him jealously as he played with something I didn't have. Fact was, I could have gone out and bought the game system and the game right then and there if I wanted to, so I wasn't jealous anymore. I was kind of sad, actually. Griffin was exactly the same guy he was in middle school, but now he was an adult, and there was little chance he was going to change. That was the last time I saw Griffin.

I've since heard that his mom died, left him a pile of cash, and with it he bought a house. He works the midnight shift at a bakery and uses his meager earnings to buy pot and video games.

Bob matured just a little more than Griffin before he stopped maturing. Whereas Griffin was stuck as a harmless early teen, Bob was stuck as a hell-raising late teen. Several arrests, multiple DUIs, a few busts for possession. He's never held down a job for longer than six months. He took several years to get his GED and never finished community college. (Though he did stop paying for his students loans and gave the collection agency my address.) He has outstanding warrants in Texas.

Fact is, I can't connect with Bob or Griffin anymore. They would always scrape by with no real ambition. I am ten years into my professional career. Just hanging around them (especially Bob) when they get busted again for possession would be enough to kill my professional life.