Friendships, just as any other relationships, are analogous to a garden, they both need nourishment to stay alive and grow.
We are creatures with a fusion of complexity and simplicity. In most cases, choosing a friendship is the most complex mind game, or is as simple as finding a few things in common with someone.
Back in 2007, when I moved High Schools, I was interested in joining the soccer team. I wasn’t very confident in my English at the time, therefore I elected to talk to any Latino in the school about it.
“Hey ‘Loco,’ what do I have to do to join the soccer team?” I asked the first random teenager in the hallway with a varsity soccer jersey, in Spanish.
He looked at me bemused. I was older, rocking a mustache that made me look like a 70’s porn-star, and terribly framed thick glasses that made my eyes huge. Like a bug. For him, I couldn’t look more Mexican.
“Well, go talk to the coach in the athletic office.” The barely 120-pound kid with a bony face replied.
I made my way towards the office, joined the team, met that skinny dude in the field and I gained the nickname, “El Loco.” For my overusing of that word to refer to my teammates.
After playing soccer with him for a while we became closer and I finally learned his name.
Elmer was given by his parents a tiny, two door, green car that could barely fit four people, let alone six.
At the time, he didn’t have a job, and he could barely add gas in his tank. His entrepreneurial mind led him to sell candy to close friends and offer rides to friends to take them to school for gas money. A deal a few of us took. However, I am someone that appreciates time and considers it more valuable than gold, Elmer did not. He would be late to pick me up around ten minutes and I would be pissed.
“Loco, the fuck? You are ten minutes late? This wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Gawd dam, chill. I overslept.”
“Don’t make it a habit.”
“Jeez, okay, father.”
All the others, crammed like sardines in the tiny little green car just laughed at the entire interaction.
Elmer’s tiny green ford focus ZX3’S tank never felt what it was to be full. We barely managed to put two to three gallons of gas after school to drop us all off. But the fun that we all had in that car was priceless.
We blasted the speakers with hits such as, “Te quiero,” “Nadie Te Va Amar Como Yo,” and our favorite “Mis Ojos Lloran Por Ti,” by Big Boy. And we felt like big boys. The road to this moment has been long. "The bed on wheels" he called it.
By mid-senior year, Elmer wanted to build some muscle to impress a beautiful girl at prom. I had been working out for a while at that point but I wasn’t buff at all by any stretch of the truth. But I was definitely bigger than him.
I am always happy to help on anything a friend asks, specially if it is to improve himself.
I was always busy after school, either helping my father do something at home or working to save for college. So, I was working out before school. Elmer didn’t have a reason to wake up at 4:30 a.m. before but now he did.
However, waking up was harder than he thought, and he started missing working out sessions which I took upon myself to bike to his house, knock his door down and drag his scrawny self to my parents basement where we worked out together. Because that’s what friends do.
It was rough as hell for him. He wasn’t used to it. I did that for a couple of years until life started hitting us in the face and we started to see less of each other.
I helped him and hoped I planted a seed of the lifestyle I started when I was fifteen to look and feel better, be more confident and sin tanto rodeo, to look good naked. Hahaha
This friendship started the most Latino manner it could. A “Hey Loco.” Was the first words that I uttered to Elmer and today he is one of my closest friends if not the closest.
Our dreams and goals are very different. They have taken us different paths. There have been times I haven’t seen this man in years, and we have never lost contact. There are people that stop talking for months and even years and when they get back together to catch up it is like they never stopped talking. But they did. And for me, that isn’t friendship. At least not the friendships I wouldn’t want.
Like I said at the beginning of this post. Friendships, just as any other relationships, are analogous to a garden, they both need nourishment to stay alive and grow. For me, once you stop talking to a person, you become detached and disengaged from each other’s lives. Yes, it may feel like you haven’t stopped talking but the amount of time lost will never be filled. You can’t compare a friendship in which both parties talk frequently and others in which you see and talk to each other once every year or years.
For the bond to grow between two people, talking and listening to each others stories, successes, downfalls, mistakes and so on, is not only basic human binding rituals but necessary. This is the kind of friendships everyone should aim to have. The epitome of friendships. You can count them with your fingers, but you can count on them limitless times.
I will never forget the first time I spoke to Elmer.
I will never forget the arguments and the hard talks to help him and help me grow and be a better person.
I will never forget the tiny two door Ford Focus. Because it was never about the car but the stories the car now stores in its frame.
In that “Little Green Car That Could” a friendship was forged. And since 2007 we have been pushing each other, listening to each other, growing mentally and physically together, supporting each other, and always being there for each other.
If you are lying to yourself and using the same lame excuse that most people use to not talk to those you consider close friends, you better grab your phone, and either text or call that person, because even a few minutes from now could be too late.
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