Meet Wyatt - Lacking Self-Control and Smacking His Friends Around - since 1981

I've calmed down a little bit now. I talked to Matt, and he's going to try to post something to confirm what actually happened by Monday or so. He's at home right now and his computer's at his Fredonia apartment.

You may have noticed that I've been advised to "let it go," but it really seems like silence would be an admission of guilt, right? Frequently, Matt will just come up to me while in the course of hanging out and punch me on the shoulder or in the chest. I usually hit him back, but this is not a violent exchange, and I don't engage in any Tonya Harding tactics. It's a stupid thing that guys do. I have no other explanation for that, but I can tell you that it is seldom if ever initiated by me. If and when I do hit Matt back, he will frequently feign injury in the same sarcastic way that he normally behaves. He's one of my best friends, and we play off each other well when in conversation by ourselves or with others. It's a good dynamic, but it does include making jokes at the other's expense on occasion.

I really don't remember any smacking around happening at the New Year's Eve party, but it's possible that it was so minor that we (Matt and I) both forgot it. Bottom line is that I never hit Matt in the leg.

Another note - when Matt decides to fuck with somebody, it's usually a complete and well-conducted job. He said something to Loretta a few years ago, to which she replied, "your mom..." Matt's response was to tell Loretta that his mother was deceased, and she believed him for more than a few HOURS, feeling awful of course. It wasn't until much later that she found out he was just screwing with her and she didn't take it well.

In other words, he doesn't say something with a straight face, wait till it's been accepted as fact, and then break into a smile right away. He might let you go on believing it for minutes, hours, days, or weeks. He's good at it.

If you read my original post, I talk about how Matt was at my apartment when Aaron called and told us that Amy told him that I had smacked him around. We were both incredulous. And I still am.

I'm not going to go into an expansive history of how Amy and I have gotten along or not gotten along. I considered it, but it would take a while. Suffice it to say that in high school, I thought she was annoying and she thought I was a jerk. I felt bad about the way I had treated her, and made attempts to make peace with her in late 2002/early 2003 before I left for Colorado. I apologized for being such a jerk. In August of 2003, we got along really well when I came home from Colorado for Laura and Randy's wedding. And I think that's where things stood until she forwarded a couple emails to a large group, of which I was one receipient. The first one - a long diatribe about how bad the Clintons were - upset me but I decided not to reply. The second one was, as I said earlier, a play on the Ant/Grasshopper fable with the theme of ridiculing government programs/services for minorities (like Affirmative Action) and the poor. I was ticked off. First of all, I really hate forwarded mail. Secondly, the whole premise of the email was dumb. If I got something like that now, I would probably post the whole thing on this blog and then pick it apart. Instead, I hit 'Reply-All.' I did take a minor shot at Amy in the reply, but I did so in what I thought to be a fairly good-natured way, playing on her (self-proclaimed - many, many times during high school and also JCC [I heard Amy's devotion to Taye Diggs more times than I could possibly count]) fondness for black men - which is fine. I don't have a problem with it and never implied there was anything wrong with it. I also used an ebonics expression somewhat mockingly (bling-bling). Was this the right thing to do? Well, maybe and maybe not. It certainly depended on who you chose to ask. I actually got two very positive replies from two people that were on the list of original receipients to which Amy had sent the email. I was quite surprised. They were both girls from our class (Falconer '99) from whom I would not have expected a favorable reaction. I admired both of them in high school, but I was almost positive that one of the girls had even more negative feelings toward me than Amy ever did. I was pretty surprised, but I was happy. It bolstered my feeling that I had done the right thing by doing something other than rolling my eyes and hitting 'delete' when I got the email.

Well, needless to say, the email that I wrote put Amy and I back on terms very similar to those which we had been on in high school, and now you see the results: this mess.

I think I'm done now. It would be nice if Matt would post his own account of that night's events, but I've said my piece. Normal blogging will resume shortly.