my life//in medias res*

I have some “friends” they don’t know who I am, so I write quotations around the word friends; But I have a couple that have always been there for me

February 11th, 2008 at 11:02 pm by sillyjoe (Adventures in Randomosity, Life and Introspection)

I considered making “and friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the lord of them” the title of this post….but I figured an Avett Brothers quote would be hipper. Wait…more hip? I think it’s hipper. Whatever. Before I write this post, I think it’s important to note that I’ve been reading Chuck Klosterman, which may be what led to the writing style of this post, as well as the possible narcissism that may result. This is supposed to be about my friends, so I hope it doesn’t end up being about me. We’ll see.

So…on to the subject of friends:

My best friend is married. He has now been married approximately one year and one week. It’s still a bit surreal to consider it, and even more surreal when I consider the ever-growing son that is a result of that relationship. Xane is going to be my wingman before we know it. Krusty has been my best friend since middle school. I think that sounds about right. We were 11 or 12….maybe 13. We’ve actually known each other since we could walk, but we were casual acquaintances in our pre-pubescent years, and became best friends one fateful summer when I invited him to go camping with me and my dad. Our lives haven’t been the same since. Most of the summers of our formative years were spent with weekends at each others’ houses playing guitar, swimming, talking about girls, etc. I always fell for girls, girls always fell for him, he would always fall for those girls harder than they fell for him, which would result in some sort of long discussion between me and him about how she was a lame, annoying girl anyway and he needs to move on and after all, he never really loved her anyway, he just loved the idea of loving her. I would then proceed to do the exact thing I rebuked him for doing about some other girl who I loved the idea of loving. He was Derek from the time I met him to the summer of 2002, when he became Krusty during a church fellowship hall painting day. Lesson: If you don’t want to receive a nickname you’re going to keep for the rest of your life, don’t show up to paint a building with product in your hair and nice khaki pants…you will soon be covered in paint and your friends will be pointing and laughing and saying they told you so. We know each other better than most, and could tell many embarrassing stories about each other’s pasts (which is why I’m stopping with the embarrassing stories here, in the event he reads this and begins to walk around town telling everyone he comes into contact with embarrassing stories about me), and it’s still good times to hang out, even if he’s got the wife and kid around (they’re not too bad to hang out with, either). Soon, Krusty and I will have the opportunity to work together in ministry at the church I currently work at. I’m the lead worshiper, and he’ll be the student minister. It’s a crazy thought, the two of us crazy guys working together at a church, but it’s also a very exciting thought.

Another of my best friends is getting married this year. I’m one of the groomsmen. We met at college, and we’ve known each other for almost four years, but from the time we met, we seem to find more and more ways in which we are exactly alike: From which part of the female body turns us to jelly (and no, it’s not one of the glamorous ones you’d have to buy a magazine wrapped in plastic to see), to strange food combinations we enjoy (seriously, Taco Bell cinnamon twists + nacho cheese = deliciousness…if you’re not a wimp, try it and you’ll agree), to which movie’s dialogue we tend to insert into everyday conversation (Orange County, the most underrated movie of the early 00’s). Matt and I are both pop culture sponges, taking in every movie, tv show, book, and album we can get our hands on, often challenging each other’s trivial knowledge. Matt’s also the guy I’m likely to go to when I need an opinion on something. He’s incredibly smart and usually seems to know the right way to approach a situation. Matt and I have spent more than one late night eating whatever turned out to be in his apartment’s cupboard, waxing philosophic on the issues of life, and our own personal situations. We’re both musicians, and we bond over the play of three songs in particular, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” Ben Folds’s “Fred Jones Part Two,” and Dave Barnes’s “Prayers of the Saints.” Matt steals my music on a regular basis, which is okay because I borrow his books and sleep on his couch on a regular basis. We have an arrangement.

I have another friend who has the same first name as me. That would be Joe. He’s a barber. His wife is the only person in the world I know who actually checks this blog so I’m going to try to avoid anything embarrassing about him (wink). Joe is also the tech guy at our church. Now, what this means is that I (the worship leader) have to work with him (the tech guy) on a regular basis. It’s kind of confusing because someone always mentions one of us and then everyone has to try and decipher which Joe they’re referring to. This can happen anywhere from 1 to 11 times on any given Sunday morning. Joe and I also share a neverending, almost sad lust for all things Mac. Neither of us has a MacBook yet, and the first one to get one will likely rub it in the other’s face for months. Joe and I met on a summer camp trip in 2001 that my youth group went to with two other youth groups from our county (I met our church’s pastor on that same trip that same year. At the time, he was a youth pastor at a church that neither Joe nor myself attended. Life is strange isn’t it? On top of that, the following year I met a girl named Crystal at the same camp, who married Joe a few years later. She’s the one who reads this thing. Hi, Crystal. Joe/Crystal, Krusty/Brittany, and myself make up an interesting group of church buddies. And before you ask, yes, this sometimes results in me being the fifth wheel. But Crystal and Brittany are best friends, as are Krusty and myself so Joe (the other one) has to be the fifth wheel too. So I don’t mind.

I have a friend who lives in Nashville, though he’s not a musician. Which is strange, because though I have several musician friends, none of them (I think) live in Nashville. He’s a physical therapist. Well, he’s in school to be a physical therapist. I think he has his license now, but he’s still in school (at Belmont) to get his doctorate. He had a hand in the naming of Krusty. Matt Cabbage (or Chewy as I often call him when in a playful mood) had a huge hand in getting me to really start playing the guitar. When I was a freshman in high school, my dad got a new pastoring job at a church called Buffalo Baptist in Rutledge. My time there had a deeper impact on me than most other times in my life (except for maybe my year as a student at Carson-Newman…more on that later): if it weren’t for the events that occurred in those five years, I definitely wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing and living the life I’m living right now. Anyway, to Matt (told you, the Chuck Klosterman effect is happening). When we went to Buffalo, I was very excited because it was a church that had a youth group. I’d never been a part of a church with a youth group, and I’d always been the only person my age at the churches we had pastored at (Not always, just from the time I was old enough to care). So I then meet Matt Cabbage, a year older than me and a thousand times cooler than me. He listened to Dave Matthews Band and could play “Jimi Thing” and “Lie In Our Graves.” I had tried to play the guitar a couple of years earlier, taking lessons for a time, but not putting in any real time and giving up completely after a bit. Matt always brought his guitar to youth group stuff on Wednesdays and always played it for a while after the stuff was over. There were a couple of other youth who played as well. I saw them doing this every week, and wanted to be able to play with them, to do what they could do. I asked for an acoustic guitar for my birthday (The guitar I had at the time was an electric, a Fender Stratocaster that I eventually sold for money for college books. To this day I wish I still had that guitar). I got an Ovation Celebrity, and somehow got really good at it. I think it may have had something to do with sitting in my room two hours a day with the guitar. ANYWAY, Matt and I became six string compadres, jamming to Dave or to Caedmon’s Call songs at his house. We even recorded some stuff on his computer. Many inside jokes resulted (”there’s a squirrel outside my window!”), and I pray to God that I still have those recordings somewhere on my computer (I just looked, and I don’t…sad times). I have more inside jokes that involve saying the randomest of things with Matt Cabbage than with anybody on the planet. We could probably create our own language with these inside jokes and nobody would have any idea what we were talking about. He’s been in Nashville for college for a few years now. I miss the kid.

Speaking of college, my roommate for the year I was at Carson-Newman’s name is Andy. I’ve known Andy since high school, but we were just barely casual acquaintances in those days, only bonding over a mutual love of Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb and New City Cafe. But Andy was instrumental in me ending up at Carson-Newman. I had no idea what I wanted to do for college, where I wanted to go or what I wanted to major in, and two people campaigned for Carson-Newman harder than anyone for anything. As a matter of fact, nobody else tried to get me to go, well, anywhere. My sister graduation from CN in 1998, and Andy was a freshman there when I was trying to make my decision. Over several chai teas at New City Cafe, phone conversations, IM conversations, and other assorted talks, Andy made his pitch to me. It’d be great. We could be roommates. I’d love living in Alumni. I’d go crazy for Howdy Hoot. Yada yada yada. It was all true of course. I decided to go to Carson-Newman, Andy and I moved into Alumni room 207 as roommates, and we had a grand time. Perhaps too grand of a time. Neither of us made it past that year of schooling, both dropping out, and we’re both now working for a living. At any event, that year is the only time of my life that I’ve lived away from the house I grew up in, the house I still live in now. It was an interesting time, a time in which I’ve made some amazing friends, and other than Matt Cheney (the aforementioned soon to be married guy who likes cinnamon twists with nacho cheese), Andy is probably the one who knows me best. We spent many nights not sleeping, instead watching Swingers or trying to come up with top 5 lists of the hot girls we could remember from high school. I don’t see Andy very much anymore, and I’m saddened by that. We’re both pretty busy guys. Andy is also a pretty awesome songwriter, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him that. So Andy, if you read this, you’re a pretty awesome songwriter…there ya go.

There a few more friends I’d like to write about, but this post is already reaching ridiculouslylongland, so I’ll save it for later…until then…