Dear 17-year old James,
Who is your best friend right now? Shannon MacKenzie? I
bet that you think you will be friends forever, don’t you? Unfortunately, we
will never know how long our friendship with her could have endured because
this is the year that I betrayed her.
Luckily, you are in a position to
listen to my advice and prevent this incident from ever happening. Maybe then
we could still be friends now like we always thought would happen.
This school year you will have many classes with that
dramatic boy from your Human Anatomy class last year: Colt Kitchin. Do you remember him? Well
Shannon will not like your blossoming friendship with him because she will not
appreciate his flair for dramatics and eventually you are going to have to
choose between the two of them.
Let me start by explaining what is going to happen. One
day, during one of Colt and Shannon’s routine arguments, Colt takes the banter
one step further by joking that Shannon’s mother is going to die from her
terminal cancer. Because this is a touchy subject for Shannon, she snaps at his
comment and slaps him before walking away. Startled, you stand there unsure of
what to do . . . The next thing you know, Colt is trying to coax you into sign
a witness form saying that you watched her slap him, a form that would get
Shannon suspended . . . I signed the paper.
One year later, Shannon’s mother actually passes away,
but she stopped talking to me after I helped get her suspended, so I have not
been able to seek her out and offer comfort to her. It is weird to know so much
about someone that I am no longer friends with, and it is even more weird
feeling as though I want to help someone but feel like trying to talk to her
would open up old wounds.
I think that if you do a few things differently, you can
prevent some of these difficult transgressions. The first thing I would say is
not to get so close to Colt. He may seem like a fun guy, but where is he now? I
don’t know; somewhere off at college probably, but the point is that we are no
longer concerned with keeping up with each other’s lives. The second thing I
would suggest is to go comfort Shannon after she slaps him because that will
prevent Colt from seeking out your help immediately afterword when you are
still stunned. Then the third thing I think that you should do if Colt does
come and ask you to sign the witness form is to NOT SIGN THE PAPER. Ultimately,
she should not have slapped him, but do I think that she should have been
suspended for doing so? No. Colt was just being dramatic and rude, as always.
Please follow these steps and you can stay friends with
Shannon. Maybe we will stay friends forever, or maybe we will stop being
friends in another dramatic argument two weeks later. At least if we try this,
however, we would be ending the friendship on our own terms and not because of
a disagreement with someone else.
Sincerely,
18-year old James
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