Jonathan (Jack) Ingram

Looking at my list of people to write about, I realize that this blog will chronicle most of the important milestones in my life. Is it best to introduce the important characters early on or do I just bounce around and give them spotlights as I feel necessaary? Damn my urge to have coherent story structure.

Yesterday, I got a strange phone call from Citibank Student Loans saying Jonathan Ingram's mail had been bouncing back to them and they called me because I was listed as a personal reference. Jack was my best friend from seventh grade and through all of high school. He is currently working teaching english in Japan.

Jack and I used to joke that we became friends the day after my Bar Mitzvah. He wasn't there but he was definitely one of my best friends starting that year and with my "becoming a man" in December, it must have been very soon after.

My oldest memory with Jack is 7th grade lunch. We sat at a table with two clearly divided groups of people. There was us and a few others who would have been branded huge nerds and a group of self fancied popular kids. Looking back it's hard to say who was actually popular but Jack and I took great joy in using our intelligence to upset these people. One in particular; Dusty Landers. Yes, that was his real name and I thought about writing this entry about him but really it would be a waste because it was when Jack and I first bonded. Dusty was really fond of using the word "fag" when referring to us. He managed to fit it into some sentences multiple times. Jack and I would pick vocabulary words and string them together in sentences when talking to or about Dusty. ("Why Dusty, you're acumen is farcical.") He would look at us clearly trying not to have his brain explode and come back with a retort. (Oh yeah, well you guys are fags!") Frequently, we said things that didn't even make sense, but he didn't know that. As seventh graders we found this funny every time. Oddly enough, I was never beaten up for this behavior and it probably started to cultivate my smug attitude that I could get away with anything because I was smarter than a lot of people. In all fairness, I got into very little trouble and pulled a lot of crap over the years, so it was a lessen well learned.

Of course I have a million stories about Jack, but this was the beginning of my longest standing friendship to date.

From Jack I learned that quality was more important in friends than quantity.