Archive for the ‘Tales of My Shady Past’ Category

While The Best Friend was incarcerated, we continued to keep in touch.

We wrote letters.
Lots and lots of letters.
Sometimes I would get 1 a week,
Sometimes I would get 1 a day.

There were cards sent on holidays and birthdays.
Pictures exchanged here and there (get your head outta the gutter—they weren’t THOSE kind of pictures).

I tried to keep him as up to date on what was going on in my life.

He let me know about the things he was accomplishing while in prison.

• He earned his HSED.
• He became a peer counselor for the AODA program.
• He took advantage of anything that could teach him new things to help prepare him for his release and the future.

I loved the letters.

When we wrote letters, we weren’t afraid to be completely open and honest with one another about anything.

I miss the letters.

In addition to the letters, there was the occasional phone call.

With him being in prison on the other side of the state, it made it very difficult to go see him so we made do with what we had….

Pens.

Paper.

Envelopes.

Stamps.

From the time he left the county jail until we saw each other again, a year had passed.

In that year, a lot had happened.

I became pregnant.

I became a mom.

The one thing that had not changed was our friendship.

Even from a distance, I stood by his side.

I will never forget the look on his face when he saw me for the first time in over a year.

Prior to this day in particular, October 20th was already marked as a day with both good and bad memories. 2 years prior to this date, a close family & longtime friend passed away in a car accident. The following year on that same date, my Goddaughter was born.

This day in 1997 was not a good day.
It was not filled with celebrations, laughter etc.
It was filled with phone calls, tears and a trip to the jail in a neighboring county.

That day as I was driving around making deliveries for work I received a phone call from the friend that The Best Friend was staying with.
I had expected the call to deliver good news.
I never expected what I heard next…

Anne, it’s ______. I wish I was calling to tell you something, anything other than this, but _____ has been arrested. They came and picked him up from work and took him in.

At first I was confused.
What could he have possibly done to warrant his being picked up from work by the local police and detained at the county jail?

Then his friend gave me further details.
As I heard them, my jaw hit the ground….

They are charging him with sexual contact with a person under 16.

Now, here’s a little back story: The Best Friend had been dating a girl who was 15 (very close to 16 @ the time) and he was 18, they had sex, her parents found out and pressed charges against him. That’s it. That’s his crime.

He sat in jail for months, was sentenced and thrown into the Wisconsin prison system.

I visited him at the jail in the neighboring county when I could prior to his transfer to prisons such as Dodge, Waupun and Prairie du Chien .
I accepted collect calls from him, wrote letters and did whatever I could to help support him during this time.

Not only was he sentenced to sit in prison until 2000 but he was now a registered sex offender for life.

For having sex with a minor.

Really?!

For the next few years my best friend continued to land himself in jail numerous times.

I got used to accepting collect calls on the holidays and my birthday from him.

Letters arrived in the mailbox every other day of the week.

I however, continued to stand by his side and be there for him when he needed me.

He was in and out for various reasons.

A drug charge here, theft and even burglary.

But there I was, right by his side every damn time.

When he dropped out of high school……there I was.

I think the reason I stood by him through it all was because I knew I was the only one who really was there for him.

His parents were anything but a positive role model.  If they weren’t sitting there smoking dope with him, they were doing it by themselves or trying to find a way to score some.

Not only were his parents having a negative impact on him, his older brother was doing just the same.

I knew I was all he really had after hearing his mother yell at him over and over and over again for getting into trouble and how he was useless.

I heard her blame him every time he screwed up and never once apologize to him for not being a parent to him.

There was no way I could walk away from him.

He needed to know that someone, anyone was going to be there to help pick him back up when he needed it.

I was determined to be that person.

In between his stints in jail, we would spend time together when we could.

Whenever I had a car available, I would drive the 20 minutes to go see him.

Towards the end of Summer in 1997, a friend of his and his family let him move in with them in hopes to help him get on the right path.

We continued to spend time together and I was happy that he was finally making a life for himself.

He had a roof over his head.

A ‘family’ that loved him.

A job.

Great friends.

And me.

Things were going great.

That all changed with one phone call on October 20,1997.

In the Summer of 1994 I spent a month working for the DNR in the extremely Northwoods of Wisconsin at a Youth Conservation Camp.  It was during this time that I met someone who would become my best friend and so much more through the years.  This is the story of ‘us’ and everything that has occurred up to the present day.  The story of The Best Friend will play out over numerous posts as there is so much to tell.  Enjoy!

I remember the exact moment when I met him.

He walked up to me, with a cute blonde girl at his side, and said Hi! I’m _____ and this is _____.  We are retreads….meaning we just spent the last 4 weeks here and are staying through for the next 4.

I introduced myself and as the blonde girl excused herself, we continued our conversation.

After filling me in on what to expect for the next 4 weeks, he asked me were I was from.  We were both very surprised to learn that we lived about 20 minutes away from each other.  Other than him, there was one other person who was from Green Bay and I actually knew her since we grew up together.

As the days passed, we became very close and were almost attached at the hip.

About 2 weeks later things took a turn and he got sent home, but that did not stop us from talking.

We continued to call each other while I was still stuck at camp and him hundreds of miles back at home.  Not only did we talk on the phone, we wrote letters….LOTS of letters.

Once I returned home, the letters and phone calls continued.

We would talk on the phone late at night while watching the Jerry Springer show and mocking the guests.

That September, my family was heading to the races to support a driver my dad currently sponsored and it just so happened that my friend lived in the town we were headed too.  After talking it over with my parents, they agreed to pick my friend up on the way so he could join us.

After we picked him up and arrived at the race track, he opened up to me and informed me that he had gotten into some trouble and was currently on the bracelet.  He didn’t want to tell me over the phone or in a letter because he feared I would stop talking to him.

It was at that moment that I made a promise to stay by his side and we carried on with our evening together.

I was enjoying just being able to hang out with him again.

Had I known at that point that I would continue to support him and be by his side for so long and break that promise 15 years later, only to be hurt over and over again, I never would have uttered those words.

(* This is an excerpt from the Tales of My Shady Past and will be shown in it’s entirety in the eBook)

When I was in the 2nd grade, we moved into the house my mother grew up in.  Shortly after moving in, a new family moved into the house next door.  They happened to have a son who was in the same grade as me (at the time).

Over time, The Boy Next Door and I became really good friends.  I would take trips with his family up north for the weekend, hangout with him at his Grandma’s after school or just spend time at each others homes watching movies.  We were just really good friends.

Once 6th grade ended things changed.  He was held back to repeat the curriculum while I moved forward with my friends.  When this happened, we weren’t able to see each other much at school but still found time to hang out afterwards.

As years passed, we grew further and further apart.  We were both on different paths and had a different group of friends.  We would still say “Hi” in passing but did not make an effort to see each other.  Again, we were on different paths.  I was in a long term relationship and he was experimenting with mind enhancing items.

When I became pregnant with Zman when I was 19, The Boy Next Door was very happy for me.  He would make a brief appearance every now and again to check in on me but things were nothing like they had been when we were kids.

Shortly after the birth of Zman, The Boy Next Door was sitting outside one night and I popped over to visit with him.  We sat and talked for hours and moved inside as the night air got cooler.  It was so nice to be able to sit and catch up with this old friend of mine.  Making up for the time we had lost together over the years felt wonderful.

How was I to know that it was that exact night that curiosity would finally kill the cat?