I was a bit of a menace in elementary school. I was very hyperactive and restless and had some authority issues, and on top of that just generally didn’t fit in well with a lot of my peers. the friends I did have all belonged to the same sort of social misfit group as me, and alex was one of these friends. he was a pretty edgy kid and probably had some anger issues looking back on it. his home life was also a bit rough, I think one of his parents had some serious medical issues. he was also a jewish kid in a exceedingly waspy environment and was new to the school, so there were a lot of reasons he probably felt othered there.
he and I used to play together at recess every day with two girls and pretend like we were the characters in the Spiderwick Chronicles, collecting weird rocks and cicada wings and pretending like they were goblin teeth and fairy wings. alex and I would also hang out after school sometimes, usually at his house because he had Halo and Call of Duty and I wasn’t allowed to have violent video games at home. sometimes we’d sneak into construction sites of houses that were still being built and just mess around. we’d go up on the roofs and sit and talk for a while, getting about as “deep” as a conversation between 9 year olds could be. mostly it was commiserating about feeling out of place and talking about which girls we liked.
eventually we had some kind of falling out, I forget exactly what happened but I seem to recall that there was some tension over us both liking the same girl. my mom also thought he was a bad influence so she stopped sending me to playdates at his place. I think we both went to the same middle school and high school but ran in very different circles, so we didn’t interact at all after elementary school.
years later I looked him up on socials out of curiosity and found out that he had become a radical zionist and I think he was a part of one of those programs where foreigners can volunteer for the IDF. i think he moved there and now is working for a non-profit supporting the IDF. I’m personally ideologically aligned entirely on the other side of the spectrum from him, but thinking on it now it makes sense to me how someone who grew up feeling alienated would be attracted to the zionist narrative. still it’s crazy to me how differently people’s lives can play out despite at one point sharing similar environments