Bad Influence

I was the smarter one of my group of friends. Not necessarily in terms of books, but in the ratio of who do stupid things in comparison to smart things, I was the winner. I had a friend named Ryan. Ryan is a perfectly mature person right now, and is typically very smart. But that was not the case in seventh grade. Ryan had just come from homeschooling, and he was clay that was unmolded, so naturally we molded him into someone we could get a few cheap laughs from. I remember on his first day we told him to burp into the intercom. And he did it. I thought our English teacher was going to blow a valve. She turned bright, BRIGHT red. She may have had a mini-stroke, I kid you not. And on another occasion, we told him that he should lock the deadbolt on the door while the teacher was out. And he did it. Same teacher, too. I'm pretty sure her heart stopped for the 15 minutes she yelled at us. Which, in retrospect, is pretty cool. He actually didn't get in trouble for that one. He fessed up after class and she was totally okay with it, and I've no idea why, that was a very atypical performance of mercy from her.

So, yea. We were bad people. But I think, accidentally, we taught Ryan how to grow up. And he did. He's one of my better friends now, and I think that through all of it, it did make us better people and better friends.