I think we've all been in a situation where one of our close friends becomes involved in a romantic relationship, and, seemingly overnight, we find ourselves asking why they stopped calling. There's a balance that has to be made between your friendships and your romances that a lot of people just don't seem able to make, but there's never a time that you should choose one over the other. Remember: it's never appropriate to abandon a friend for a date.
Velma was a very close friend of mine in the early years of elementary school, and it was rare that we wouldn't be playing together at recess. We would eventually grow into bitter rivals who openly hated one another, and I think that this might have been the start of the end for us.
There was a small group of us that played together at recess, most of us from the same class, but a few from the class across the hall from us, and we had a series of games that we would play and sort of cycle through them as the week went on. On this particular day we were playing a team-based form of tag that kind of combined with capture the flag and a few other games. I can't really remember all the rules, but I know that, once you were caught by someone on the opposing team, you were sent to their jail and had to wait to be released by someone on your own team. If, after your capture, you chose to play turncoat and defect to the other team, you ran the risk of getting captured by your original team, at which point they would "kill" you and you would spend the remainder of the game as a ghost -- which basically meant hovering around the playing field making spooky sounds but being unable to affect anything that was happening.
Since Velma and I were the bossiest people on the playground, we often found ourselves being the leaders of opposing teams. Sometimes, if there was someone else that wanted to be a team leader, we would end up being on the same team and dominating the game, which was deemed "unfair" by the losers. Because they were losers.
Being the team leader meant that you got to bark out orders and organize the strategy. You would meet with your teams at the top of the game and lay out how everything was meant to go down. Naturally, since we were dealing with a pack of rampaging children, they were unable to understand the complexities of my intricate plans and ruined them horribly through panic or sheer stupidity, and would later say something along the lines of "why should we listen to you now when your last scheme didn't work," which would infuriate me because the only reason it didn't work was that their tiny brains were unable to process the details of brilliance that I had so easily laid out for them. It was for this reason that many of our team members started being used as "cannon fodder."
On this particular day, the players were myself and Velma, Velma's friend Willow, whom I had only rarely spoken to, Isabelle, Jill, and my friend Jesse, and two other kids that sometimes watched us play and finally asked if they could join in. Velma stepped up as the first leader, and, as I was stepping forward, more out of habit than anything else, Isabelle piped up to say "...can I try leading this time?"
Never one to say no to those who say no to me, I stepped back and allowed her to be leader. This is where the awkwardness of getting picked last in P.E. class gets turned on it's head. Our system for choosing our teams was that the leaders would plead their case as to why they were the better leader, which Velma and I had done so often that we no longer needed to do so, people just knew. Once the leaders had made their case, the remaining people would then choose their sides, sometimes the teams were uneven, and sometimes we were able to coax others into switching teams before the game started up.
Isabelle said something about why she thought she would be a good team leader, and I'm sure it was eloquent, but when it came time to choose sides, no one moved. After a few moments of silence broken only by Velma's irritated "...WELL?!" Jill stepped forward to Isabelle's side, and the rest of us remained still. Jill chose Isabelle because she deeply hated Velma, even then.
When no one else moved forward, I, too, chose to stand at Isabelle's side, shrugging to Velma saying "just to be fair, you know?" This pacified Velma...until her friend Willow came and stood beside me, followed by my friend Jesse, and both the other boys that had joined the game.
The look on Velma's face was kind of priceless, as she found herself standing alone, and, since I didn't think this was fair, I took a hit for the team and switched sides. I was then followed by Willow, Jesse, and the two boys. Apparently I had been a much more effective leader than I had thought. But Velma's new found satisfaction was countered by Isabelle's new found desperation.
"What? That's not fair!" Isabelle cried out, "come back! Come back!" I acquiesced, and returned to her team, followed once more, by four others. This started a large debate from everyone on both teams, and all of our choices were called into play.
"I want to be on Lundy's team," Jesse said simply, while both the other boys agreed that they wanted to be on a team of boys and not one of girls. This is when Velma took charge.
"Okay, Jill: you stay with Isabelle," Velma commanded, to which Jill muttered "...planned to..." Velma continued, "Lundy and Jesse with Isabelle, and to make things fair, the other two boys on my team. Willow, you come with me and we're all even."
"I want to be with him," Willow said at almost a whisper. Velma's eyes narrowed into a glare, I'm not sure if it was directed at Willow for her betrayal, or directed at me for stealing her friend away. "Why?" Velma asked, to which Willow replied simply with "I like him. I want to be on his team." Velma rolled her eyes and, angry at this point, said "fine, Jill, you're over here." Jill shook her head, and Velma tried once more to coax Jesse over, but he, too, wouldn't move.
"We can have uneven teams, can't we?" Isabelle asked, now that things were in her favour. After a minute of thinking, Velma agreed, but only on the condition that both Willow and I would start out in the enemy's jail, and also that any and all ghosts created during game play would be hers to command in order to impede the other team by blocking off the goal.
This game would actually set off a chain of events leading to ghosts being banned from the game, as they grew irritating in their "I'm not touching you" antics.
Throughout the game, I found that, every time I would get caught and sent to jail, Willow would be caught moments later, leading to the both of us standing in the jail waiting for rescue. I think the reasoning behind it was that, in order to get rescued, everyone had to hold hands, creating a chain trailing behind the person rescuing you, thus making it easy for the opposing team to re-capture those who are in the process of being saved by simply capturing the savior. After having found myself trapped pointlessly with Willow for a third time, I decided that psychological warfare was perhaps the best answer.
"Wow, it's too bad you're in here, too. You're probably the only one fast enough to save me," I flat-out lied to her. Jill was probably the fastest runner that I knew, at least at that point, and she was usually the one coming to rescue us, since few of the others could catch her. But this really got to Willow, and she soon proved that she was quick, as she never again got captured, and seemed to spend the rest of her time either drawing opponents away from me, or coming to save me. We started to make a really good tag-team, as I now started to make more daring attempts at capturing the opponent's goal, and, if I got caught, she would swoop in moments later to save me.
It was our working together that drove Velma off the deep-end...but the psychological break of my 8-year-old best friend might be a story better left for another time.
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