Troy
Sometimes there are friends that become more than ‘just friends’, they become part of your family. I’ve been pretty lucky in my life cos I have a few friends like that. Although in March my family got smaller.
I met Blair in high school, he came into my class one day and made an announcement that for his year 10 project he was gunna set up a skatepark at the school the next day. He pointed out me and a couple of other kids who skated and said that he had arranged for us to have the afternoon off school if we bought our boards. Fuckin sweet! What a great start to a relationship, don’t even know the dude and he gets me out of a maths class.
Well, we weren’t best friends immediately but from the start I knew this guy was out there. He had new ideas about things, and he had huge balls. As a kid I once saw him get in trouble from a teacher and he was asked to spell his name so that she could write it down and report him to the principal. He patiently and obediently spelled it B- L-silent P- Silent H, silent U, silent C and she was gullibly just writing all this down not even really listening to what he was saying. He always got away with stuff like that, all the time, no one else I knew could do that.
Blair was a better skater then than I have ever been but even though at the time, to him, skating meant so much he didn’t really care about that. He encouraged those who were with him to be better than what they were. He gave out confidence and he made you believe that you could do things you wouldn’t have thought possible if he hadn’t told you that they were. And he backed this up by doing things on a skateboard, and in his life that seemed impossible.
Lots of who I am was shaped by him. It was him who got me excited about going overseas for the first time when we went to Hong Kong with his mum. And I’m sure it was him that taught me (or at least proved it to me) that you needed to take big risks to get anywhere good. In fact my wife picks out little things and personality traits about me all the time she reckons I stole from Blair. Maybe I did and I’m keeping em.
Blair loved his friends, he was as proud of us as we were of him.
One of the best things about having a friend that is part of your family is that their friends become more than just ‘friends of a friend’ they become family friends. There is a difference. I might not have Blair anymore to laugh with, or at, to share what is happening in my life or his but through him I have a lot of family friends and for that I am grateful.
Troy
I met Blair in high school, he came into my class one day and made an announcement that for his year 10 project he was gunna set up a skatepark at the school the next day. He pointed out me and a couple of other kids who skated and said that he had arranged for us to have the afternoon off school if we bought our boards. Fuckin sweet! What a great start to a relationship, don’t even know the dude and he gets me out of a maths class.
Well, we weren’t best friends immediately but from the start I knew this guy was out there. He had new ideas about things, and he had huge balls. As a kid I once saw him get in trouble from a teacher and he was asked to spell his name so that she could write it down and report him to the principal. He patiently and obediently spelled it B- L-silent P- Silent H, silent U, silent C and she was gullibly just writing all this down not even really listening to what he was saying. He always got away with stuff like that, all the time, no one else I knew could do that.
Blair was a better skater then than I have ever been but even though at the time, to him, skating meant so much he didn’t really care about that. He encouraged those who were with him to be better than what they were. He gave out confidence and he made you believe that you could do things you wouldn’t have thought possible if he hadn’t told you that they were. And he backed this up by doing things on a skateboard, and in his life that seemed impossible.
Lots of who I am was shaped by him. It was him who got me excited about going overseas for the first time when we went to Hong Kong with his mum. And I’m sure it was him that taught me (or at least proved it to me) that you needed to take big risks to get anywhere good. In fact my wife picks out little things and personality traits about me all the time she reckons I stole from Blair. Maybe I did and I’m keeping em.
Blair loved his friends, he was as proud of us as we were of him.
One of the best things about having a friend that is part of your family is that their friends become more than just ‘friends of a friend’ they become family friends. There is a difference. I might not have Blair anymore to laugh with, or at, to share what is happening in my life or his but through him I have a lot of family friends and for that I am grateful.
Troy
posted by speech at 9:00 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home