This Guy.

I'm sure everyone has a shortlist of people that they would do anything for. I would say outside of my fam that list would include 5-10 people this man being in the top five...



When I met this guy the odds were heavily stacked against us having any sort of friendship.

This all started in the summer of 1995 when I attended the Cleveland hardcore festival of that year which was ironically hosted by one Randall Thatcher, its ironic because Randy just added me as a friend on Facebook. Anyhow during the infancy and long before the days of message boards I was on this thing called the "Straight Edge MAiling List" (or SXE-L). A mailing list was kind of like a message board but instead of going to the website where the message board was you would have all the messages sent to your email inbox, You would reply etc. and everyone would get the messages. I met alot of friends that I still have to this day on that thing. BAck to the the story...

I met alot of people from all over the country on the SXE-L and I met alot of them in person at the two big hardcore festivals in the Summer of 1995. The Columbus Fest and the Cleveland Fest. One of the people I met that summer was this girl Kim who used to write alot on the SXE-L, you could say that she was one of the most popular people on the list. So I met her at the cleveland fest and hung out with her and alot of the other SXE-L kids at the fest. It turns out that she had fallen for one of the other kids on the SXE-L, his name was Wayne. They hung out had a great time and everything was beautiful. There was only one problem Kim already had a boyfriend, a boyfriend who apparently cared a lot for her. I remember hearing some stories from kim about him being an bad guy but it was irrelevant to me at the time because whe would I ever meet this guy?

That happened a few weeks later when Kim ventured to Guelph, ON (a couple of hours from Buffalo) to hang out with Wayne. I remember getting some sort of phone call from Kim saying that she was hanging out with Wayne in Canada but that her boyfriend was freaking out. For some reason she told her boyfriend to drive from North Carolina to see her even though she was with this new guy. I don't know about anyone else but I think I would have dealt with my boyfriend upon my return "home" So she told her boyfriend Greg to come to Canada to see her even though it really seemed as if their relationship was all but over. SO greg drove up to guelph (which is about a 15 hour drive) to try to save what was left of his relationship.

SO greg arrives in Guelph and Wayne and I had to go to this mall parking lot in the middle of the night to meet him. for some reason the scene reminded me of the parking lot in the back to the future. The one in which Dr. Brown gets shot. So over the next few days I ended up getting to know Greg and I remember we (me, greg, wayne and kim) went to a hardcore show in lockport at the end of the weekend. Greg and Kims relationship was done and greg was to go back to North Carolina. I had gotten to know him over that weekend and for some reason I felt close to him. SO when he was leaving I gave him a hug. Kim didn't like the fact that I gave him a hug because I was supposed to be on her side.

anyhow to make a long story short. that hug started our friendship and 13 years later it is still one of my strongest friendships. I'm not even sure where Kim is these days.

Greg is the strongest argument I've ever been witness to for not judging people before you actually have a chance to meet them or know them.