Despite the fact that I'm a dirty athiest, I was baptised as a wee lad. In fact, my baptism was performed at the same time as a kid down the road from me. We'll call him [A], and he had a younger brother, [C]. Before I even started school, I hung out with [A] and [C] a lot. We neighborhood kids used to get together and play baseball, hockey, football, and video games year round. Through those two, I met [J] and [M]. And, oddly enough, I'd met Caniprokis through [J] - though, this was not realized until very recently. I've come to the conclusion that Caniprokis was the guy who used to beat [M] up for no reason, just because Caniprokis used to be that kind of guy. Now hunch hangs out with [M]. Hehe. I also met Pappy through [A] and [C], back in third or fourth grade. [A]'s mother used to always tell us to be nice to him because I think they used to tease him. Us bastards.
I met Bean in Kindgergarten, though he didn't go to elementary school with me until second grade (scary, too, that I still have my class photo from that year). Bean was insane from the beginning, and has continued to be insane his whole life. We played video games and sports at his house with the group of kids he hung out with from East Haven and other areas I knew nothing about at the time. Him and I became very close friends, and when he moved away to East Haven we still found ways to hang out. Unfortunately, he then moved to Florida.
Early on I began hanging around with Syn, since he didn't live far away either. Syn and I used to alternate nights at one another's houses to play Nintendo games. I remember that Syn used to be really passionate about doing everything in the games perfectly, so much so that he oftentimes would become furious. But all was cool. His house had this smell about it and to this day I've never encountered that smell. We liked the Nintendo game "Ninja Gaiden" so much that we made up our own series of comics about ninjas, it was pretty fun. The scary thing is that I still have a few of them. By fifth grade, though, Syn had moved away and I rarely saw him much after that. Thankfully, the internet has put us back in touch again. Thank you, Pappy! Hehe. =)
Also around fifth grade, I stopped hanging around with [A], [C], and [J] (and thus, Caniprokis), though stayed friends with [M]. The others fell in with a crowd of people who knew my true geek nature and made fun of me - so they, too, began to make fun of me. The final straw came when we were playing hockey and [A] broke my Nirvana tape and pushed me onto the ground. I kissed that group goodbye with no worries and followed Syn and Bean to the lunch table they sat at. And, of course, through Syn and Bean, I met Lio Convoy and some other unmentionables. The unmentionable people, of course, realized us as the geeks we were and soon did the same thing to Lio and I (Bean had moved to East Haven by this point and Syn was also gone) that [A] had done to me. So, we made our own group, with Lio sort of being our head.
On the first day of sixth grade, I met Bloody. We were both looking for a class, he asked me if I knew where it was. It turned out we were looking for the same class and together we found it. Bloody was like no one I'd ever met before - he was one of those "fringe" kids, one of the ones whom if you didn't know him you'd just pass him off as a piece of garbage. But for some reason, he and I became really close. Now, even Bloody has moved to Florida. =( I remember he had some sort of dislike for Lio, but through constant urging I got the two of them to hang out and, of course, they became fast friends as well.
After we had formed our own group, I remember we sat one lunchtable ahead of the one where Stone, SpoDudeZ0r and Wilson sat, along with some others. They were the Dorks, capital "d". We may have been the geeks, but they were worse - they had a kid who sat with them whose face was covered with acne, and this was middle school! SpoDudeZ0r used to have this haircut (which we look back on now only with love) called the "Spo-fro". He was in a class with me where we argued about whether the Super Nintendo or Genesis was better and he showed me his home-made "Street Fighter" and "Zelda" RPGs (which I had no clue about at the time). They played D&D, and we weren't that bad so they were the geeks, at least to me. They had another kid, [D] (what's he up to?) who would pay back his friends with pennies and eat lots of garlic for when he burped at people. I'm not sure where Pappy or Peps factored into this. Peps just kind of materialized later on through a connection with Lio and Bean, I believe. Pappy was off wandering about somewhere, still loosely with those kids who'd ditched Lio and I, if I remember correctly. Hehe. =)
It wasn't until our Freshman year, though, that we all coagulated into one big group. I was also in that Reading & Study Skills class. I remember having this fierce dislike of Stone because he read slightly faster than me. That was also where my nickname was invented, by the teacher who thought my last name was pronounced, "Calliander". I, too, had a crush on "Bleaker". (Q: "Where is she?" A: "Pregnant.") I did some crazy stuff. But we all know the high school stuff, so I'll cut this off here. Let me know what you thought!