Back in our high school days, Jay and I had two friends. Well, we had more than two friends, but there are two friends in particular that I find myself thinking about from time to time: Chip and Oz.

Jay and I had known Chip since elementary school. Chip was a heavy, boisterous fellow. Did I mention he was heavy? That's important. I'm not sure how Jay and I became friends with him individually or together, but it was not a developement he and I were altogether pleased with. Chip was heavy. Chip was obnoxious. Chip was deeply, deeply unpopular.

Chip was always a nice enough guy, but he was sometimes a little too booksmart for his own good. He was a know-it-all who acted smarter than everyone else. Of course, he was smarter than most high school students, but he didn't know how to convey that without coming across as extremely arrogant. That, combined with his weight, combined with overprotective parents and social inexperience put him in a box that he would never really be able to get out of.

Because he didn't have (m)any friends, the fact that Jay and I tolerated him made us among his best. The truth is that (a) we didn't know how to tell him to buzz off and (b) our parents were friends with his parents. Nonetheless, there we were. There were times when the friendship was worthwhile both ways. We all drew comic books at the time and Shadowguy (my character) and the Deatomizer (his character) eventually became part of the same comic book universe and that was pretty cool.

For the most part, though, we wished he would just go away. In high school, we ducked him at lunch and would move around day in and day out until he got the message, which to his credit he did. Nothing we could do would seem to make him stop considering us his friend, though. We could never find it within us to be unadulturatedly cruel to him, so we never really crossed that line. I can only think of one time in art class when we took it a little further than usual and he declared an end to our friendship. He preceeded to sit at the other end of the table with his "new friends," two guys that were bigger jerks to him than we were. He'd loudly talk about at us how nice it was to not be with any false-friends.

Another friend of ours was Oz. I have to take the blame for Oz penetrating our inner circle because he was verily my friend first. Oz's mother and my own were members of the same charity group. He was only eleven days older but was a grade ahead. Unfortunately, I placed above my age level in Bay Area Youth Baseball and so we were on the same team year in and year out, so we became friends. At Seabrook intermediate and later at Clear Lake High, that friendship unfortunately continued and through me Jay became equally weighted by his friendship.

Like Chip, Oz was also unpopular. Oz was not particularly heavy or even necessarily unattractive. There were various handicaps he had, such as his overactive sweat glands. On the other hand mine are overactive too and I was never as unpopular as he was. There was something else about him. It's hard to pinpoint exactly except to say that he was a complete assmuch. Oz was extraordinarily racist, arrogant, and self-centered. When his father got fired, he used that to bilk me out of $30.

At the time Jay liked this girl named Simone. We tried to recruit her to sit with us in the mornings before class started and succeeded for a while until she refused to sit with us any longer. Why? Oz. She couldn't take him anymore and to be honest, we couldn't blame her. Jay and I primarily got by with our very high toleration for the obnoxious. There was this other girl named Joy that used to sit down the way from Jay and I at lunch. Jay had a thing for her. When I got transferred out of that lunch period he had the perfect opportunity to be annexed into their lunch group if not for Oz transferring in. He longer had the rationale ("I'm eating alone") to go over there and even so, he couldn't go over there with Oz because he would embarass the living daylights out of him. For that reason and another, he never took his chance with her.

Oz and Chip both had that effect. There are a number of friends we could have made were it not for the friends that we already had. In the past I've always clumped Oz and Chip together in their mind as friends who cost us friends.

The other day Dad and I went to my old elementary school for the Cub Scouts' pancake breakfast. I ran in to Chip's mother, there. She was always an extraordinarily nice woman. She asked how I was doing and I told her about what I was up to. I asked how Chip was doing. He apparently decided to go into IT work instead of be a vet. He graduated from Texas A&M about a year and a half ago and has been unable to find work. He's back living with the folks, but he met a girl online and they're going to be getting married.

I found myself overjoyed that Chip had met someone (he never dated anyone in high school). I was really sorry about his job situation and tried to figure out if there was anything I could do to help. When I got back to Gattaca, I put in his name for a referral. We get paid $1500 for everyone we refer, but since I won't be there anymore after the four month waiting period I wouldn't see a dime of that. But I felt that if anyone would fit in with the Gattaca environment, Chip would. To give you an idea of how well Chip deals with authority, one time he was over at my house and asked if he could use the bathroom. I very sarcastically said no. Half an hour he asked, "I'm sure you have a good reason, but why can't I use the bathroom?"

It's funny how similarly I thought of Chip and Oz back in the day because when I look back now I see that they couldn't have been more different. Chip was the victim of a weight problem and poor socialization skills. Oz, on the other hand, had the tools to be accepted but was just a jackass. I was happy that Chip was doing well and sorry that he wasn't. With Oz, the pettiest parts of me would be happiest to find out that he's still reviled wherever he is and whatever he's doing.

When I think of what I might have done differently in my life, I would have told Oz to buzz off. It turned out, Mom hated his mom just as much as I hated him. It's a more complicated matter with Chip, but I would like to think I'd have found some way to deal with the situation that wouldn't have involved me constantly puncturing his ego while not allowing his unpopularity to pull me down and his annoyingness to annoy me.

I feel bad that I was as nice to Oz as I was and that I was as mean to Chip as I was.