I’ve never been great at selecting which friendships to invest in. I commit too much time too quickly, they never seem to last, and the ones that do always cause more trouble than they’re worth. The earliest friendship that I can remember was with my neighbor, Terrance Mccullom, who lived across the street from me. I can remember friendships earlier than this one, but they all occurred before I developed object permanence, and really didn’t have much of an impact of my psyche.
Terrance and I were the same age, neither of us yet in school. We instantly bonded over our shared love of Power Rangers. We were also both the only children in our families, which was important. It meant that we both knew the loneliness that came with living exclusively with adults. In retrospect, I think my parents paid more attention to me than Terrance’s paid to him. This would cause problems for us, because it determined what sort of attention each of us would be seeking. At the age of four, however, this felt like a blessing. I felt as if I had been given a twin brother. Somebody who would understand what it felt like to be lonely with an active imagination. Little did I know that I had no idea what either of those things meant until I met Terrance.
Terrance was a really fun kid to play with. He called poop “kaka”, because that’s what his grandma called it. He always smelled a little bit like kaka, but since I hadn’t met many kids I figured this was normal. Terrance was great at coming up with games and playing pretend. We would pretend to be Mario and Luigi from the Mario Bros. games, and he would come up with unique stories for our characters to experience. This was fun until Terrance would inevitably get bored of the story he made up and decide that he was now Bowser instead of Mario, and try to hurt me. This was usually when I went inside.
Eventually, Terrance got bored of playing pretend altogether and would instead try to get me to do things with him like fight with sticks, or play ding-dong-ditch, or kick car tires until the alarm went off. I would usually just keep watch while he did these things by himself and I tried to convince him to stop. He usually ended up getting in trouble before I could convince him.
The bulk of my friendship with Terrance took place over two years, but it seems longer than that in my head. We saw each other almost every day, yet every time that I saw him he seemed to have gotten a little bit older and a little bit less innocent. Our paths were beginning to diverge. While I remained sheltered, Terrance was seeing the world for what it really was. At six. His parents had started buying him video games that were rated “M” and taking him to see movies that were rated “R”, which he would describe to me in graphic detail.
I didn’t go over to Terrance’s house much, but each time that I did he would show me these things against my parent’s will, which made me feel guilty. I wanted to be good, and at that age my perception of “good” was essentially what my parents told me to do. I would usually go home pretty quickly, at which point Terrance would call me a “scaredy cat”. This always made me cry, which I guess proved his point.
One summer, Terrance got a bunch of miniature fireworks that were technically legal in the city of Chicago since they didn’t require any type of ignition, though they certainly weren’t safe enough for a 5-year-old to be playing with. One of the miniatures were these sealed plastic cylinders with strings attached to them. You would pull the string, which broke the seal causing confetti and smoke burst out. Terrance and I were playing with these one time when out of nowhere, he stuck one in my ear and threatened to pull the string if I didn’t tell him that he was my best friend. I think he was starting to get jealous of a new friend that I had made at camp that summer, Erik.
“You’ll go deaf, and you’ll never be able to hear your parents tell you that they love you ever again.” He said angrily, shoving the tiny explosive a little deeper into my ear.
Even at 5 years old I knew this thing probably wasn’t powerful enough to make me deaf, but I was afraid of how much it would hurt. Besides, just the idea that I wouldn’t hear my parents tell me they love me again, or the fact that somebody would or could threaten me with this was enough to make me relatively upset, and I began to cry again.
“You’re my best friend! You’re my best friend!” I shouted, and part of me actually believed it as the effects of Stockholm syndrome had started kicking in.
Terrance put the contraption down and started to cackle.
“You smell funny!” he said, and started walking back to his house.
“Yeah? Well you smell like shit.” I wanted to yell back at him.
But I didn’t. Instead I wiped away my tears and went inside. My Mom said that Erik’s Mom had called and asked if I wanted to come over. I said yes and ended up sleeping over. It was fun. But I was sure to take a shower before I went over.
The following September, we started first grade. To each of our liking, Terrance and I had been placed in the same classroom. Terrance may have started becoming more aggressive in recent months, and he may have started being meaner to me and the neighbors, but he was still my oldest and best friend, but I still felt a commitment to him. I don’t know why.
It became evident to me early on that my friendship with Terrance was not going to survive the new social realm known as elementary school. There were so many kids, so many fresh faces that even though he was sitting only a few feet away from me I often forgot that Terrance even existed. That is until he did something ridiculous like lick somebody’s face or start tearing the pages out of his textbook and eating them. The further we got into the school year, the more difficult it became to maintain our friendship. I was meeting new kids, kids who didn’t show signs of sociopathy and who smiled and liked to pretend things that weren’t inherently violent. Meanwhile, Terrance and I were moving in opposite directions in terms of social hierarchy. I was the teacher’s pet, a position of respect in the early days of schooling, and he was the black sheep, a revered and feared position by the rest of the class. He was the wild card, and while this intrigued people, it also scared them away.
The more that our paths diverged, the more I wanted Terrance to follow me. This was partially because I didn’t want him to fall into the dark depths of bad behavior. I wanted him to see the light of good behavior and listening to the teacher. But it was also because I wanted my behavior to be justified. I wanted to know that I was doing things the right way. It was the constant struggle that we had always had, our differing methodologies for getting attention.
In school, we got along fine. I think that I was Terrance’s only link to the concept of good behavior, so he would sometimes pretend that we were still close just to get on the teacher’s good side. I don’t think she bought it, necessarily, but I think she definitely saw the possibility that a sheltered kid like me could rub off on an angry kid like Terrance. Little did she know that it had been the other way around for years at that point. Regardless, Terrance didn’t cause me any trouble in class. Back in our neighborhood, it was a different story. Terrance was getting meaner by the day. He had started cursing more and always wanted to play “fighting”, which would just be when he would try to fight me and some of the smaller kids on the block. For the most part I had started staying away from him as soon as we got off the school bus.
On the last day of class before winter break, we had one of those tiny classroom parties that were such a joy for the kids. That is, everyone except me. Teachers usually passed out candy or sugary treats on these days, and if Kindergarten had taught me anything it was that there are some kids who just couldn’t handle their sugar. Classroom parties were bound to end in tears for somebody, and the anxiety of the impending post-noon temper tantrums was enough to keep me on edge for the entire day. It was how I imagine a prisoner would feel on the last day in his cell before a mass release, some people just aren’t ready to return to the outside world.
Our classroom had two types of collective bathroom breaks. Usually in the morning we would all go together as a class. The boys room and girls room were right next to each other, and kids would wait in line next to the teacher until it was their turn to go. Then in the afternoon, the teacher would send us in groups of four or five at a time to go together. I was usually the leader of my group, and today was no exception.
As you would expect from a Chicago elementary school, the “no snitching” policy had been deeply engrained into the bathroom leader roll. We weren’t supposed to talk about anything that occurred in the bathroom to the teacher or anyone else, and in exchange most kids did what we said.
Unfortunately, Terrance was also in my group, and he never did what I said. He had been wearing a big smile on his face all day, which was not a good sign. He also was wearing his bright red Dragon Ball Z t-shirt, which meant that he had the courage to do anything. I was tense. None of the other kids seemed to notice. We got into the bathroom and as soon as the door closed, everyone started yelling and running around. This was common behavior, even I participated in a few jokes. After about two minutes, most kids had relieved themselves and were ready to go. Everyone except Terrance, who was still singing at the top of his lungs while cupping water from the bathroom sink and dropping it into the garbage can.
“Terrance, hurry up!” I half yelled, half whispered to him. I was scared, and he could tell.
Terrance looked up at me slightly perplexed, as if to indicate that he had just remembered that I was in there.
“Okay.” He said defiantly. Terrance walked from the sink into the bathroom stall while me and the rest of the group watched his pants fall to his ankles.
“I have to go kaka!” Terrance yelled from inside the stall. We all laughed, even I did a little bit. But to our confusion, we didn’t see him turn around or sit down even. He just sort of stood there.
Then it happened. The most deafening plop I have ever heard. The sound of shit hitting ceramic tile. Terrance had just pooped on the floor. The other realized there was no way to flush shit on the floor, and that it wasn’t going away. Terrance walked out of the stall laughing, but when he saw our stunned faces he suddenly stopped. The rest of the kids ran out of the bathroom. It was now just me and Terrance, and we were both terrified of this.
His eyes began to fill with tears. I had never seen him like this before. To this day, it’s one of the most human looks I have ever been given.
“Please don’t tell anyone.” Terrance said.
My heart instantly broke for him, because there was no way I could let this go. There was simply too much shit to pretend that this hadn’t happened. It wasn’t like he had just turd’d on the floor. This was a full-on shit, it took up significant surface area inside the stall.
I walked out of the bathroom to see that my teacher was already halfway down the hall.
“Is it true?” She asked me.
All she needed to do was look at me to know the answer, and all I needed to do was look at her to know she needed a cigarette. I nodded at her, and we passed each other. I went back into a classroom that was sitting in stunned silence. The nice part about this class was that Terrance was so profoundly poorly behaved, that most kids didn’t even try to act out, but even this level of silence was perplexing.
A few kids asked me if it was true, I didn’t say anything. A few seconds later we heard Terrance screaming and we peaked out the window to see our teacher dragging him down the hall. That was all the answer they needed.
After winter break, Terrance wasn’t there. I had figured he had been expelled for pooping on the floor, and I felt horrible. If I had just helped him clean it up, he would still be in school. It was going to be my fault that his life was ruined. I would soon come to find out that his parents had gotten a divorce, and his Mom had moved to another part of town. Terrance had gone with her and switched schools in the process.
I never saw him again.
Since these days have past, I’ve begun to wonder if attention was why Terrance acted the way he did. This might seem like the natural cause of such behavior for most kids, but the more I think about Terrance the less sure I am that this is true in his case. He was not a happy kid, clearly. But beyond being unhappy, he seemed genuinely hateful and angry. I had never seen anything like it. A kid so twisted and infuriated with his world that the level of chaos he was willing to create surpassed that of children twice his age. Or maybe he just needed to be told he was loved more often. Either way, it still makes me sad.
