There is a good number of significant friendships that I’ve made with people over the years, but I’ll keep it simple and talk about the guy I can call a brother. I’ll need to bring you back to 2011 when I attended my middle school (that eventually developed a high-school that I also attended), and met everyone that I did. At the time, it was just two separate grades (6th and 7th with me being in the 6th) in the building. The school managed to add more as the two grades advanced overtime.

I didn’t get to meet the guy until later in my first year because a friend of mine had introduced me to him. The 6th and 7th grade were practically almost always together with how the schedules worked out. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure how we met. The memory gets blurrier every time I attempt to remember. If anything, we more than likely met over a football game during recess. The school would allow the students to be outside from 1pm to 3:45pm after lunch every day back then. We didn’t have all kinds of equipment neither since the funding was going elsewhere to improve the school. So we always had someone in our grade(s) bring a ball to play a game everyday. If there’s anything that would make sense as to how I met him, it’s probably one of those dozens of football games we played.

Anyways, we had developed a brotherly bond that’s lasted almost a decade already. He was always there to help out, and mentor me on things that I just couldn’t make sense of at the time. He was always the big brother I always wished I had. He has a comical personality, but he’s also a straight shooter. He’s the kinda guy you can joke all day with, but tell you how it is while being the hardest worker in the room. I have a lot of respect for the guy as he’s helped shaped my life for the better.

Now, let’s move forward a few years to the point where I’m now a freshmen in high school and he’s a sophomore. Let’s fast forward to the end of the year where the summer break coming close as we’re finishing the school year. The school offered working opportunities within the building within the last month; we had both applied to make some kind of money throughout the summer, and we managed to get into the summer ‘internship’. He had shown me the ropes to getting the job done efficiently throughout the multiple tasks we were given. Either the tasks were to clean up the library, reorganize the supply rooms, help teachers setup their new rooms, and the list goes on. He taught me life skills, he was there to help me become my own person instead of following the crowd, he was just the guy who was able to help the little guy. Little did I know I would’ve met the brother I never had in this small school. Now, I realize I’m probably doing a terrible job at expressing how much respect I have for the guy, but you get the idea.