The Week Of Aaron

The delegation of someone being a friend is quite weird. By definition, a friend is “a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.” There are people I talk to that I would consider friends, but I don’t know that they see me as a friend to and don’t just fake it. There is one friend who I know who sees me as quite a close friend. I would do anything for them and I know that they feel the same for me. Though before talking about it, I need to explain our strange friendship.

In middle school, we went on the same bus since we lived by each other. I tend to flock towards more mature people so I started to talk to him. Just as it is in flock mentality, someone picked on me and he joined in bullying me for about a year, mind the fact he is also 3-4 years my senior. It would only end after circumstances would cause him to not go on the bus anymore. I had completely forgotten about this until I host a party my Junior year and see him working at his work at the time. I ask him if he wants to come, and to my luck, he says yes. After him spending the night of the party over, everyone from the party would go get breakfast. Something about 8 teens eating breakfast at a mom-and-pop diner that really brings people together. Since that day my friend and I have been close, getting each other both out of trouble for a little longer than a year now.

This is when the story actually starts, since we became closer and closer friends, we saw more and more of each other. After the party, I spent almost all of my free time hanging out with him. Though we came from different styles of life, we both had a lot in common so it just happened to work out, not even causing us to get tired of each other. Something that was quite funny actually is we also both happened to have a lot of common friends already, even if it was a 4 to 5 years difference from when we first met. Even when we were separate I would get messaged to either pick him up and hang out or if I could pick up a friend to go over to his house. Eventually, the school bus driver would get upset when I would get on her bus and not my original since we had moved. Causing me to stop spending school nights over which meant it was just a weekend or vacation thing. Which would birth what we called “The week of Aaron”, also known as my least favorite Christmas ever.

With everyone being busy in my family, I spent my Junior year’s winter break at Aarons. It went as you would expect with teenagers. We watched movies, watched youtube, played games, and just celebrated youth together. He didn’t own the place he lived but did rent it out, to lower the price he did chores throughout the year. By “he” I actually mean “we” since I was always hanging around him. I didn’t mind helping either since I liked the people he rented from. One of the things he had to do was a shovel and plow the driveway. If you remember that year’s Christmas at all, you may remember the snowstorm that also came with it, and oh was it a white Christmas. During the storm another old but now cut-off friend would come over to hang out, which meant he would also have to help us. With two people shoveling and somebody plowing the driveway it wasn’t a difficult problem.

You may realize there is still more three-hundred words missing from this story and know that there has to be a but well here it is. Since his landlord was the only plow truck on the road we also had to plow his road. The road is just dirt and is about big enough for a car and a half to drive on it. Our first pass goes well, at first. When coming to the top we try to deposit the snow more towards the right where there is no property. Well by putting the snow here, we get stuck trying to go in reverse. Left, right, forward, the truck won’t budge at all since it is dug into ice. So we shovel snow away from the tires to try to get her going again. Five to ten minutes pass and we finally get the vehicle moving again. Aaron apparently doesn’t know how to pay attention while backing up, hitting a large metal gate into the side of the vehicle. I love this guy to death, but it was so dumb because not only did he back up into the gate breaking off a side mirror, he also got us stuck again. Of course I’m the one who is on shovel duty so I go back into the elements to deal with his issue. This time it was much quicker though thankfully and it was just a couple minutes this time.

“Why is there another large paragraph, this should be done,” you think. Well, we got stuck more than twice. Backing down the road and going up we would get stuck another two times. For those keeping tally that’s 4 times now. After the fourth time getting stuck I got into the back of the cab instead of the truck figuring we were done. It turns out while we were having our issues the driveway had filled up with a lot more snow so it needed to be replowed. Aaron’s first time bringing the snow from the front to the back of the driveway, we get stuck on ice, so he drives forward then back, making us now stuck in the snowbank we just created. Through pure will power and multiple “are you serious?” from the party of 3, I single-handedly get myself stuck in the snowbank trying to get the plow unstuck with a shovel. I proceed to end my Christmas excursion by crawling out of the snow and getting my shoe stuck in it still. Meaning I had to dig for my shoe while my foot was in the elements and freezing. I would walk away from the truck stuck, with the other two following me, us all hanging our heads in shame, but also in anger. A simple chore turned into 2 hours of having to deal with little visibility since of course, it was also dark through most of this, plenty of snow, and a broken truck. All while soaked, just because I wanted to be nice and help my friend so we could play games together. If anyone asks me do I regret it, I’d tell them no because of what that Christmas did for me. I got the gift of having what I assume to be (whether he likes it or not) a life long friend. Through thick and thin my friend is there for more, it’s pretty funny considering our more than friendly introduction to each other.

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