hat was all it took. Halfway through that same year, Mike and I became inseparable. In fact, our yearbook had a section that liststhe names of students and what they were never seen without. Under Mike, it read: "Ted, " and under Ted:"Mike." I became a staple at his house and he at mine. We no longer had to ask our parents if it was ok to havea sleepover on weekends, they assumed we would. On weekdays, we usually walked over to his house, whichwas near school, and hung out there till I had to go home. Our favorite past time on those long afternoons afterschool was to walk to the nearby food mart and get a bag of chips and two 24 oz. Coca-Colas. Watching amovie, we would sit on his couch with our chips and Coke and talk about our dreams of working together in themovies. Mike wanted to be a director and actor, and I wanted to be an actor and a playwright/screenwriter. Itwas the perfect combination. We even tried writing a few scripts together. Of course, as two seventh grade boys, it wasn't all skips through the park either. We were extremelycompetitive and would get into brutal fights for seemingly no reason at all. One time, I pulled out a chunk of hishair, but I don't remember what started the fight. I think that our connection was so intense that we could nothave normal emotions toward each other. As friends, we were best friends, but in an argument, we wanted tofight each other to the death. Still, the Wrestlemania days were rare; ordinarily, the intensity of that connectionwas a good thing. I was pretty shy about girls, and when I did talk about them with guys, I would usually just saya girl was "hot." With Mike, I could really talk about girls and who they were; with Mike, I didn't have to put on mypublic "cool" faade but could really say what I felt about a girl. Then we went to separate high schools. We tried to maintain the friendship, and you might think we would havebeen able to since we had been so close, but we drifted apart...
