by the late Ed Pittman
Part of animal nature is the resistance to change, including the acceptance of new characters entering into the herd. It’s universal, all the way up, or down, depending on how you equate things, to the human race. We, the higher beings, may have started the whole thing. Generally it works its self out without too much damage being done, unless there are some participants of unusual durability on both sides if the adjustment. I got into one of these situations early on in life. How it worked out may have not been the best thing for my bravado but it probably saved some skin and clothing, and it was an early introduction into the value of picking the right friends.
We moved from the Kirvin School District to the Fairfield School District, a distance of about ten miles, when I was about eight weeks into the First grade. This was long before the days of K school, short for Kindergarden, and “First” was really the beginning for most of us. Showing up eight weeks late to join a group of boys at the age of six or seven is a major invasion of the social order, and I could see by mid morning of the first day that I was in for an inquisition by the establishment. I had disturbed the pecking order and was faced with finding myself a place in this group of twenty-five or so guys who knew where their place was and didn’t want anybody rocking the boat. I’ve always seemed to have a fairly good run of luck and it took shape before the day was over in the form of a lad by the name of James Cherry. James was about a foot taller than anyone else, perhaps a year older, and everybody knew where James stood in the pecking order; just about any place he wanted to. James adopted me that day. Maybe he needed a special friend too. It was a marriage made in heaven. The adjustment was settled. As a friend of James I was free to come and go without paying homage to anyone. I’m pretty sure he and I shared the contents of my lunch bucket. It was a small price to pay. Later on I developed several new friends at lunchtime that were interested in the leftovers of my lunch bucket. My mother fixed too much anyway.
A few days after I was settled at the new school, my dad asked one evening after supper who was my best friend. I said it was James Cherry. He said that was nice, but why did I settle on him. My answer came easy. “He does my fighting for me.” To me it was a logical thing. My Dad agreed, or at least, did not disagree, and got a chuckle out of it. Picking friends is an important part of life. Picking one who can help out in a jam is not all bad. It’s part of wisdom.
I still value the memory of James Cherry and the role he played in my life in the first grade. He moved away at the end of that year, to Streetman or Wortham, and I never saw him again. I hope he knew then and his spirit knows now that he made the world a better place for me. And I love him for it.
