Thanks for the phone tapping.
The attention seeking ahole flunked medical school and was so afraid of his parents that he “ran away” to join the insurgency in Iraq in 2006 (we’re from Jordan). Apparently he wanted to go on Jihad and fight the Americans.
After he disappeared his parents turned on me, accusing me of recruiting him to go, they proceeded to report me to the police and national security as well as going to all my family and friends houses calling me all manner of things from murderer to a religious recruiter. The incredibly ironic thing is that I’m the farthest thing from religious. I was dragged through police stations, interrogated and from what I was told, put on a watch list(which includes phone tapping).
He eventually turned up and from what I heard, he was hiding in some farm in the countryside for weeks. It was one of the worst periods in my life, and when he reached out he had the audacity to defend his and his parents actions.
Agnostian
This story is too common.
Married her and had a kid.
The kid consistently interrupts any conversation that does not include him, so we kinda have this kind of “business partnership” where we can only find time to discuss issues about the house and the kid.
No talk.
aykcak
“She just doesn’t like me when I’m around you.”
We were huge buddies at university, then went our separate ways for career. But the week before I emigrated, I traveled across the country to his home town and we camped out in an abandoned quarry, building shacks, making fires, drinking whiskey and talking bollocks. It was my last great time in my homeland before leaving. During that trip I met his new girlfriend, just long enough for a cup of coffee before we went out. She seemed nice, and I was glad he’d found someone.
Fast forward three years, and he invites me back for a guy’s weekend before he gets married. We go go-karting, paintball, drinking – all the usual stuff. It’s just him and me in his little house in his village, and I ask where his wife-to-be is since they’re clearly living together at this point.
“Oh, she’s gone to stay at her mother’s for a few days”.
“That was nice of her – giving you space to let off some steam,” I casually comment.
“Not really,” he says. “She just doesn’t like me when I’m around you.”
That sentence was a slap in the face that still stings a decade later. I’d met the girl for 15 minutes three years earlier, and she’d taken an instant dislike to me. I don’t know what I did, I don’t know what I’d said to offend her so badly, and my friend never volunteered any further information. We still had a great weekend together, he and I, playing hungover golf and eating all the student shit we’d survived on years before, but there was always that nagging thought in my mind of ‘what had I done, what didn’t she like? Is it me in particular or just something I represent?’
I was invited to the wedding, but I couldn’t get rid of that nagging thought that the bride despised me, so I made my excuses and didn’t go. I’ve only spoken to him once since, via sms, to congratulate him on the birth of his kid, and that was 5 years ago. I know he’s got a happy life now, and I don’t want to turn up and spoil it.
Grrrmachine