Enemies to Friends

The moment I stepped into the classroom of my first sophomore day meeting, a guy at the back yelled a teasing remark at me. Everybody laughed. He joked about how tall I was and how I could pass for a basketball player. Back then I was very conscious about my height, and I was humiliated - to say the least. But I just walked on with my head held high and grabbed the farthest seat away from his group. He was this guy who hung out with the crowd of the so-called “cool people”. This group did nothing but suck at class, torment the teachers, and pretty much hassle everybody else that they felt was nowhere in their league. Typical high school bullies. I was a new student then, and I hated them.

He continued to bug me for about two more months. He constantly teased me about my height, even my name. I was a source of constant amusement for him. I despised him so much I remember wishing he’d vanish from the face of the planet – as though that was remotely possible. However, as I gradually began to make friends of my own, and started fitting in with the new environment, I realized that he behaved that way when he was interested in someone. Not romantically, but he was just intrigued by me, I guess.

Then one afternoon in class our teacher suddenly went AWOL. Everybody was just hanging out, talking, laughing, and just being their usual noisy selves. I remember sitting beside my friend Shiela, when he suddenly sat in front of us and started a comfortable banter with her.

Now Kerwyn (that’s his name) was the funniest guy in class. He was popular for his hilarious remarks and the pranks he had pulled on a lot of teachers and students. In other words, he got pretty mean sometimes. But I guess he was in a good mood that day, because he and Shiela were just goofing around. He teased her the same way he teased me, although his comments to her were kinder and more polite because they’d known each other since grade school. They were pals, actually, since Shiela seemed really comfortable around him.

I was starting to panic. What if he started his usual attacks on me again? I couldn’t endure another round of humiliation. But when he looked at me, there was suddenly something different in his eyes. They were actually… friendly.

Suddenly I became a part of their conversation. Music. Kerwyn and I started to have this whole music talk together. It turned out that we liked a lot of the same bands, shared a lot of the same opinions, and practically lived on the same musical wavelength. Soon we were singing a song together, and later that day I was incredulous at having gone by a day without the humiliation of being duped by Kerwyn Paulino.

Then the time came when our Math teacher started to really get on my case, and Kerwyn was the one who always stood up for me. Every time the teacher from hell attacked me, he defended me. Thanks to his teacher-tormentor reputation I was spared a lot of humiliation. Soon another one of his friends, Christopher, also started defending me every time I got into scrapes with the horrid Ms. Semaña. And to think that I had a lot of arguments with him in the past, too!

We became the threesome every time Math class came around. Soon the entire class, who hated our teacher as much as we did, started in on it. Ms. Semaña was a tough one, though. She didn’t give up on our class like countless other teachers had, despite the daily torture we inflicted on her. In fact, She retaliated as much as she could, and our Math class gradually became a battlefield.

She made girls in our class cry, heaped tons of homework on us, humiliated each and every one of us every chance she got, and flunked almost three quarters of the class every term. I think Kerwyn got the lowest flunking grade in our school’s history. But it didn’t seem to bug him; he was just a laidback guy who always lived just for today. In return he also made her cry, made her walk out on us countless times, and just plain made sure that when she was in our class, things weren’t going to be easy for her.

And so it went on for a whole school year. Kerwyn learned how best to handle Ms. Semaña; when she picked up a thread leading to humiliating him, he behaved as though she was his favorite teacher. Every personal attack she gave him was returned with innocent adoration. This cracked our whole class up, as you could imagine. I guess we were just typical high school students - out for fun and ganging up on a lecturer we felt had been sent from hell.

My group of friends began to grow, and I even started hanging out with all of Kerwyn’s other friends. He and I remained close until the day we graduated, and to this day I have tons of great, fun memories with him. Now, six years later, he remains one of my oldest, truest friends.

He is soon to graduate, but he studies in a different city, far away from the town where we grew up. We barely see each other but we make it a point to always keep in touch. And every time he comes back to town, all of us - the old crew - always find a way to hang out together. A few months ago we celebrated his birthday and we had such a great time, reminiscing old times, adolescent pranks, and especially the times we spent in Ms. Semaña’s class. We look back at it with only mild amusement now, for we have all grown so much.

Kerwyn's old callousness towards other people has gone; in fact, he now gets along with all the people he used to torment relentlessly in high school; even with the girl whose skirt he set on fire. It was great to see.

Now, looking back at all those times he used to tease me, I can only chuckle. It was such a small price to pay for the friendship we have found in each other.