My English Paper
Jacob Bender
20060213
English Composition
Julio
Julio has been my best friend since seventh grade. So many of my friends from school have since gone off to do their own things and more or less vanished for all my intents and purposes. But he and I have not only stayed in touch, but in close proximity for over a decade.
Julio is a dark-skinned Hispanic man whom some would consider to have been ‘raised white’. He is very stern and has a very gruff exterior and biting sarcastic manner that can tend to mask his goodhearted nature to the world. Many people have spoken down about him in my presence, describing him as a ‘jerk’ among other things. I know he can come off that way much of the time, starting friendships with a well-intentioned humorous insult, but inside he shows a great deal of concern for others.
This is much the way in which I met him. I sat next to him in English and Social Studies class and we would spend our days heckling whatever lesson plan our teacher, Ms. Zarow, had planned for the day. Although one might say we were troublemakers, we both had the highest grades in the class for the majority of the year.
In time, our pursuits and interests diverged, yet somehow this didn’t affect our friendship to the extend I had seen it affect other peoples’. I became more interested in scholastic pursuits and guns, while his interests centered primarily around his sport, wrestling. In this he became very adept, making varsity his first year and maintaining it every year after. He wasn’t one of those student athletes you see these days wearing their varsity jacket everywhere - he hardly ever wore his, even on match days. He never was too much for showing off his abilities and accomplishments. That’s just the kind of person he’s always been, a silent professional.
I remember on one occasion, a very unpleasant fellow took unusual offense to a comment Julio made about his attire being ‘thugged out’. The other guy, a large black man roughly equivalent to most 70’s-model Buicks, seemed very intent on engaging Julio in a fight. He was large, but by his movements he was most likely not very experienced in hand-to-hand combat, an observation which I’m sure Julio caught onto almost immediately. I had seen Julio, on the other hand, take down two people about my size and keep them both down and pinned at the same time. I knew that this guy didn’t really pose a threat to Julio, and I knew Julio knew it, yet for some reason Julio spent several minutes attempting to avoid the fight, even allowing the man to throw several insults and racial slurs. Eventually, he gave up on the fight and left, and I asked Julio why he didn’t simply pin the guy and degrade him in front of everybody present, which is what I would have done. He just told me that simply having the ability to force somebody to do something shouldn’t always mean you must do so. I later found out that not only could Julio have beaten the other guy physically, but he had been carrying a gun that night as well.
Eventually, the day came that we had long hoped to get to, which became the day we now hope to get back to, graduation. Immediately after graduating, I moved several cities away, and yet we continued to stay in touch. Eventually, he joined the army and went away to basic training. While he was in AIT,
9-11 happened and I was worried he might be sent to Afghanistan in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. He came home, however, a little different but for the better. I decided to join as well and ended up, by sheer coincidence, being placed in the same battalion as him, a fact which I did not realize until nearly half a year later when I returned home.
The unit to which we were assigned was unbelievably political and dysfunctional, although I did not realize this until years later. He spent the majority of his time trying to dodge responsibilities, a behavior which confused me at the time because it was not at all like him. The responsibilities he did accept were those of SRP’s, off-site reserve activities which required extensive travel. During these he generally took me along and showed me the ropes.
One time, on one of these SRP’s, another soldier with whom I had developed a sort of relationship, proposed that I spend the night in her room. I did, and the following day everything seemed fine between us until right after lunch time. For some reason which, to this day I don’t even know, she decided to tell everybody that I had behaved very inappropriately with her that night. The claims she made were not even close to what actually happened in that room, but with nobody to corroborate my side of the story, most people simply believed her. I suppose Julio might have had an easier time if he had simply washed his hands of me that day, but he backed me up until the very end, at significant risk to his own career. Eventually it came out that she had lied and told different stories of what had happened to several different people. Some, however, still believed her, and both Julio and I finally came to see how political that battalion could be.
Finally, in mid-to-late 2004, our battalion’s number finally came up and we were deployed to Iraq. Early in the deployment, they removed Julio from my detachment and placed him in another, which meant he would be going to a completely different corner of Iraq. For the majority of that year, we were out of contact and I wondered a lot if he was safe where he was. It wasn’t until it was time to come home in November of 2005 that I saw him again. He had become very different, and it was obvious that the war had taken a heavy toll on his sanity, as it did mine. Because of his silent nature, he had not really talked to anybody about any of his problems all year. He told me he wished I had been there because I’m one of the few people whom he knew would never judge him.
During our last month in Iraq, we took advantage of the improved conditions of the base at which we were stationed. They had just begun to import real meat, so we rigged up a barbeque and began to do one of the things we have both loved for a long time, grilling. Although the steaks we bought had become quite expensive, we had both been saving our money all year and could afford to spend the $20 every other night. In hindsight, having steaks to cook seems like a rather trivial thing, but at the time it was almost like we were home again, in his backyard, cooking up a storm. I didn’t realize what a good cook I had become until I got back home and went out to a steakhouse. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, nobody yet has held a candle to the ones we cooked over there, and this comes not just from me but from all the people over there for whom we cooked. Not bad for using microwave-thawed meats and average ingredients cooking in a primitive environment.
At long last, we both returned home the day before Thanksgiving of 2005. My parents picked us both up at the airport and we went to the one place that we had been talking about and yearning for since we left home - In-n-Out. Of all the places we used to eat, that was the one I think we both missed the most because we just couldn’t get good hamburger over there. As we ate, a group of high-school age kids took it upon themselves to start making fun of us. My idea to meet them in the parking lot was quickly extinguished with a look from Julio. I don’t know what he was thinking at that exact moment, but somehow I think it was the same thing as I was thinking; remembering the times at that age we had done the same thing to complete strangers.
He has since gone on to a new job with the federal government with a salary rarely offered to people our age. I haven’t seen that much of him since we got home but I know deep down that we haven’t kept in touch for this long through all of this adversity to let a job keep us from hanging out. He’s a real life-long friend. And unfortunately for a lot of people, those aren’t even things that come along every lifetime.
20060213
English Composition
Julio
Julio has been my best friend since seventh grade. So many of my friends from school have since gone off to do their own things and more or less vanished for all my intents and purposes. But he and I have not only stayed in touch, but in close proximity for over a decade.
Julio is a dark-skinned Hispanic man whom some would consider to have been ‘raised white’. He is very stern and has a very gruff exterior and biting sarcastic manner that can tend to mask his goodhearted nature to the world. Many people have spoken down about him in my presence, describing him as a ‘jerk’ among other things. I know he can come off that way much of the time, starting friendships with a well-intentioned humorous insult, but inside he shows a great deal of concern for others.
This is much the way in which I met him. I sat next to him in English and Social Studies class and we would spend our days heckling whatever lesson plan our teacher, Ms. Zarow, had planned for the day. Although one might say we were troublemakers, we both had the highest grades in the class for the majority of the year.
In time, our pursuits and interests diverged, yet somehow this didn’t affect our friendship to the extend I had seen it affect other peoples’. I became more interested in scholastic pursuits and guns, while his interests centered primarily around his sport, wrestling. In this he became very adept, making varsity his first year and maintaining it every year after. He wasn’t one of those student athletes you see these days wearing their varsity jacket everywhere - he hardly ever wore his, even on match days. He never was too much for showing off his abilities and accomplishments. That’s just the kind of person he’s always been, a silent professional.
I remember on one occasion, a very unpleasant fellow took unusual offense to a comment Julio made about his attire being ‘thugged out’. The other guy, a large black man roughly equivalent to most 70’s-model Buicks, seemed very intent on engaging Julio in a fight. He was large, but by his movements he was most likely not very experienced in hand-to-hand combat, an observation which I’m sure Julio caught onto almost immediately. I had seen Julio, on the other hand, take down two people about my size and keep them both down and pinned at the same time. I knew that this guy didn’t really pose a threat to Julio, and I knew Julio knew it, yet for some reason Julio spent several minutes attempting to avoid the fight, even allowing the man to throw several insults and racial slurs. Eventually, he gave up on the fight and left, and I asked Julio why he didn’t simply pin the guy and degrade him in front of everybody present, which is what I would have done. He just told me that simply having the ability to force somebody to do something shouldn’t always mean you must do so. I later found out that not only could Julio have beaten the other guy physically, but he had been carrying a gun that night as well.
Eventually, the day came that we had long hoped to get to, which became the day we now hope to get back to, graduation. Immediately after graduating, I moved several cities away, and yet we continued to stay in touch. Eventually, he joined the army and went away to basic training. While he was in AIT,
9-11 happened and I was worried he might be sent to Afghanistan in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. He came home, however, a little different but for the better. I decided to join as well and ended up, by sheer coincidence, being placed in the same battalion as him, a fact which I did not realize until nearly half a year later when I returned home.
The unit to which we were assigned was unbelievably political and dysfunctional, although I did not realize this until years later. He spent the majority of his time trying to dodge responsibilities, a behavior which confused me at the time because it was not at all like him. The responsibilities he did accept were those of SRP’s, off-site reserve activities which required extensive travel. During these he generally took me along and showed me the ropes.
One time, on one of these SRP’s, another soldier with whom I had developed a sort of relationship, proposed that I spend the night in her room. I did, and the following day everything seemed fine between us until right after lunch time. For some reason which, to this day I don’t even know, she decided to tell everybody that I had behaved very inappropriately with her that night. The claims she made were not even close to what actually happened in that room, but with nobody to corroborate my side of the story, most people simply believed her. I suppose Julio might have had an easier time if he had simply washed his hands of me that day, but he backed me up until the very end, at significant risk to his own career. Eventually it came out that she had lied and told different stories of what had happened to several different people. Some, however, still believed her, and both Julio and I finally came to see how political that battalion could be.
Finally, in mid-to-late 2004, our battalion’s number finally came up and we were deployed to Iraq. Early in the deployment, they removed Julio from my detachment and placed him in another, which meant he would be going to a completely different corner of Iraq. For the majority of that year, we were out of contact and I wondered a lot if he was safe where he was. It wasn’t until it was time to come home in November of 2005 that I saw him again. He had become very different, and it was obvious that the war had taken a heavy toll on his sanity, as it did mine. Because of his silent nature, he had not really talked to anybody about any of his problems all year. He told me he wished I had been there because I’m one of the few people whom he knew would never judge him.
During our last month in Iraq, we took advantage of the improved conditions of the base at which we were stationed. They had just begun to import real meat, so we rigged up a barbeque and began to do one of the things we have both loved for a long time, grilling. Although the steaks we bought had become quite expensive, we had both been saving our money all year and could afford to spend the $20 every other night. In hindsight, having steaks to cook seems like a rather trivial thing, but at the time it was almost like we were home again, in his backyard, cooking up a storm. I didn’t realize what a good cook I had become until I got back home and went out to a steakhouse. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, nobody yet has held a candle to the ones we cooked over there, and this comes not just from me but from all the people over there for whom we cooked. Not bad for using microwave-thawed meats and average ingredients cooking in a primitive environment.
At long last, we both returned home the day before Thanksgiving of 2005. My parents picked us both up at the airport and we went to the one place that we had been talking about and yearning for since we left home - In-n-Out. Of all the places we used to eat, that was the one I think we both missed the most because we just couldn’t get good hamburger over there. As we ate, a group of high-school age kids took it upon themselves to start making fun of us. My idea to meet them in the parking lot was quickly extinguished with a look from Julio. I don’t know what he was thinking at that exact moment, but somehow I think it was the same thing as I was thinking; remembering the times at that age we had done the same thing to complete strangers.
He has since gone on to a new job with the federal government with a salary rarely offered to people our age. I haven’t seen that much of him since we got home but I know deep down that we haven’t kept in touch for this long through all of this adversity to let a job keep us from hanging out. He’s a real life-long friend. And unfortunately for a lot of people, those aren’t even things that come along every lifetime.