Chapter 7

I Wish I Could See Matt Again

Yes, as you have probably guessed, this is about someone named Matt. Matt Hart to be precise. I met Matt when I was in the second grade, actually, we both were. The strange thing for me was that he was home schooled. I thought that was really weird. Anyway, I can’t remember exactly when we met, but he only lived a couple of blocks away, so it really wouldn’t have taken much to get us together. We did a lot of stuff together at his house, though I can’t remember him ever coming to my place. We got to be pretty good friends that year, and the next year, he came to school with the rest of us. We were in third grade at Nixon Elementary school in Hiawatha. We were even in the same class, so hanging out was not a problem. After school I would usually go to his house, and we did a lot of stuff from there. First there was always Nintendo. Whichever system was current, you could expect to be there. We played for hours. We also tried board games, like Risk, but they didn’t prove to be quite as fun. So we turned to the kitchen. There, we tried our hand at cooking, but when that didn’t quite work out, we settled for the classic- the chemistry set. And when we even tired of that, there was still more. Next we moved on to Legos, and we never really left them. He had so many different sets of legos. It seemed like he had every ship, every castle, every little extra piece. It was so cool! You could do anything. After a few hours though, his mom, Pat, would tell us we should go outside. So we did. We had fun in his treehouse in his backyard, where we would set up some killer games of cops and robbers, and we tried to burn up bugs with magnifying glasses and stuff. There was always another friend or group of friends of his there, so there was always excitement. Unfortunately, I moved less than six months later. I finished the school year there, but I was living in Iowa City. So our relationship of best friends was reduced to an irregularly visiting friend. Now the only times we saw eachother were when I came to Cedar Rapids and went over there (about once in a blue moon). But one time we did really get together, in the past five years anyway (early in that five years...). He came down to Iowa City, and we went to a bunch of museums and had lunch, built my new Lego system, and had a bunch of fun. The last time I saw him was probably four years ago. I went to his house, and he happened to be home, so we had to have a little fun. We went down by the school, to the creek, and walked up it a ways. He’s telling me how this gang operates down here, this is where they meet, when lo and behold here come those said gang members around the next bend. We ran until we were safely inside his house. That was a fun day. I haven’t seen or talked to him since, but in lieu of the extra time I will have this holiday season, I may just give my best friend a call.