The first time I met Christopher A. Martinez was in our seventh grade English class. He sat in a desk directly to the left of me against a bookshelf and seemed like a person, a video gamer, I could relate to and make friends with. He was about an inch or two taller than me, had glasses, always wore collared shirts with pictures of imported cars, evil dragons, or both, had spiked hair, acne “due to stress” according to him, and oddly never frowned and seemed to always be there.
At the time of our meeting, our assignment was to write a poem describing a bad decision we made and what we did. I was not able think of any recent bad decision I had made worth mentioning so I started to slowly bang my head on the brown desk adjacent to me. After ten repetitions, I stopped and muttered, “Man, I can’t think of any one thing I’ve done worth writing about… so ticked off…”
He looked over and replied, “Come on Don, keep your head up, you’ll think of something eventually,” and chuckled. I half-heartedly laughed back for no apparent reason and lazily picked up my pencil to continue brainstorming topics. With the help of his encouragement, I eventually thought up a topic for my poem. That was my first encounter of his view of life and little did I know that my friends and I would later be experiencing it, a great deal of it.
Later that year, we now had a group of friends to hang out with, but there was now a rivalry in the group between my best friend James and me. The group was split in two; one group with me now hanging out against a wall with a beige shade and beige poles supporting it all around us. Across the bush-surrounded lawn was the slightly smaller group including James sitting on a bench in front of the auditorium, next to a trashcan and also under a shade. Chris was in the middle being neutral.
He continuously traveled between groups trying to get James and me to make up with each other and become friends again. He spoke as if he were at a debate trying to get his point across and score a victory for his candidacy, his prize being the reunification of the group. Eventually, he assisted in finding the source of our problems – another kid spreading fake rumors about each of us badmouthing each one another. After discovering this three weeks later and reuniting the group at the end of summer vacation, I realized that Chris worked unselfishly for the better of others and was for the most part bias-free.
Two years later the group was once again in a sense of turmoil but this time Chris, our new friend Matt, and I were chatting about how to fix the problem at hand. At lunchtime, we were briskly walking around the burgundy and white school track on a gloomy day with a slight breeze. Chris spoke of an idea involving trying to get two girls in our group to become friends again after one of them took her anger out on the other due to me ending our relationship. Matt glared at us, enthusiastically pumped his fist, changed to his sadistic tone of voice, and exclaimed, “I say we just kill them all and be done with it!”
I sarcastically replied, “Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt… wish we could but we can’t.” I averted my gaze to Chris, “Anyway, Chris, we’ve all attempted this many times within the last two weeks, each time none of them (explicit) working! Give it up, our group’s done with and it’s not coming back!”
Chris fiercely struck back, “Oh, it will. I’m not giving up on it ‘cause we will get the group back together!” I let out a sigh as Matt continued to ramble on about napalm and guns.
One morning nearing the final weeks of school, Chris gathered the five boys, including me, of the group and threw out his plan of attack. My task was to forcefully get it through Erika’s (the victim of my evil ex’s wrath) head that she should stop being depressed due to Tania (my literally schizophrenic double-crossing ex-girlfriend) ending their friendship. Even though my state of mind was failure, I still assisted Chris in his plan; it took place that same day at lunch on the gray, metal bleachers we all hung out at.
The operation started with James asking, “Erika, why are you doing this?”
No reply. He repeated again but the same response. Chris took his turn at bat five minutes later and stated, “Erika just forgive Tania for her actions. After all, she just went through a great deal of stress after getting dumped by Don, and you asked her why she did what she did to him.” At that moment, Erika seemed to understand why Tania acted why she did.
The next day, Erika came to school with a changed attitude and apologized to Tania. They became friends on an experimental basis the next week meaning Chris had actually succeeded in keeping one section of our group unified and happy. After seeing this, it made me realize that in life, all things are possible and by always being positive, having hope, and taking a bit of action, the impossible can occur, just like the feat I thought Chris could never pull off.