Day Twenty-four - The Heinrich maneuver

Recently, but in a completely different context, I wrote about this kid I met when I was doing my fourth grade - Isaac. He was maybe in the first grade, I guess, because he was way younger than myself, and his only relevance to this story is that he was the kid who had all the toys. I mean, all the damn toys. He had all the Masters of the Universe, and all of the Star Wars action figures, and G.I. Joes, and everything else - and while I had my wee fare of toys, it was positively paltry compared to this kid's stash. And no lie, I really envied this kid. Every day he'd bring all these toys to school, and he never let anyone else play with them. 

Now, I said that this school year proved to be another pretty much friendless one. I sort of assumed it would be anyway, but I did try in the beginning to make a few friends. There was this kid, and unfortunately for me I learned of his nickname before I learned his name - he started school a few days later than the rest for some reason, and as he was a returning student from previous years, everyone knew him but me. So when everyone saw him they started calling him by his nickname, and maybe because he had that kind of familiarity with the other kids that would allow for that name to be freely thrown around. And he was a nice looking kid, seemed to be pretty popular, and so I wanted to make friends with him. All that came to an end the moment I called him 'Pharmacist' - his nickname, on account of that being his dad's profession. And he told me that I should call him by his real name, but me being the young iconoclast I thought I was, kept on calling him by the nickname. Soon after the kid never talked to him again. Eh, screw him, anyway.

Then there was another kid who I tried to befriend, but I again developed this sort of friendship with him that hinged on his unending sycophancy and obsequiousness towards me. Again I found myself in a position where someone would willingly put themselves in my hands like so much putty. Whenever I told him to do something, he'd do it. If I told him to hang with me rather than the other kids, kids he'd known since the first grade, he would. And worst of all, he'd never complain. This weird goblin of a kid was really small, and he had a weird speech impediment that got worse and worse the more nervous he got - and all the other kids used to make fun of him. Maybe I never did, and that's why he chose to stay at my side? Whatever the cause, this wasn't a true friendship - by that time I was still a few years away from my very first real friendship, but before we get there we must stay here for a while longer.