Advice For a Middle Man

After last night’s post, I wound up going to bed at around four in the morning. Then I woke up at about seven for school.

When I woke up, it was kinda funny; my brain was still running the dream program in the background of my reality program. So I understood that I was awake, and I had control over my body and all that jazz. But my mind thought that I was dreaming. I thought that I was still playing with the eBlogger website, PMing my friend Amaya, and looking at theories on a fan site for the Mickey-Mouse-meets-Final-Fantasy fix video game, “Kingdom Hearts” (which I devote 45% of my brain power to, despite my hatred for all other video games).

So my brain says, “Hey, we need to check Amaya’s message.” And so it shut down. I was sleeping for a few more minutes when I woke up again—this time fully aware that it was indeed seven in the morning, I had a chemistry test to fail in a few hours, and that I still needed to ask a girl to prom. I had no memory of my nocturnal activites.

As I washed my face, put in my contacts, and brushed my teeth, the events of the night slowly dawned on me. I had some flashbacks of PMing Amayra and creating a blog on the Internet. At first, my response to the blog was, “No! I’d never!!” And I was unaware of what it was that I had talked to Amayra about; I only could remember that it was of a somewhat life-altering nature.

P.S. I don’t usually wake up like this. It was probably due to the lack of sleep over the past two months, last night being a climax for my poor body. Over the past weeks, I’ve gotten maybe seven or so hours of sleep on average. Last night, I got a little less than four.

Skipping forward, I went to school (arriving on time for the first time in two months, I’m so proud of myself!!). I was a little ticked at my teacher—Mr. Kenneth, who is the radio station advisor—because he made me leave my breakfast outside. I’m betting it was so the guy couldn’t gape at me eating it, but it was just a bagel. My gosh. Anyhow, I didn’t grumble too much because fact: I want to be a D.J. on our radio station next year and he’s kinda promised me a shift outta the goodness of his heart, and fact: he was on drugs when he was in high school and it clearly shows. No offense to Mr. Kenneth at all.

About halfway through the day, it fully hit me that I’d created a blog. With some grimacing, I decided to set out and ask one of my friend’s permission to mention him. If I’m gonna have a journal where the public can openly view it, then I should get his permission.

His name is Daniel. Sometimes we call him Dan for short. Daniel Oakes. It bothered me so much to talk about him because I’ll be talking about how he’s a recovering porn addict. He was fine with it. I was actually pleased when he went on to say, “I’m gonna confront it sometime.” Daniel has really come a long way, having the sultry stuff bundled up inside of him for so long, and only recently making a good recovery. He, like me in many aspects, is a warrior on the comeback trail. I look up to Daniel Oakes.

In the meantime, I was having issues with another one of my friends, named Sam. He’s gotten into a problem of his own with a girl who, above most things, has a crush on him and a smoking habit. This has put him at odds with the girl, as well as Quinn—a good friend of mine as well as Sam’s best friend since junior high.

I hated to see Quinn and Sam separated from each other. But it didn’t help matters that Quinn has moved and goes to a different school. So, what I felt was that they need a middle man.

I should say right here that this has been one of my occupations in high school: to be a middle man. Sometimes people don’t even ask me to directly; somehow I always get stuck in the middle, and they essentially say “Be our bridge. You’re hired.” It’s both a blessing and a curse, I suppose. Mostly it’s not pretty. The song “Middle Man” by Jack Johnson (whom I’ve just been introduced to, and if you haven’t heard him then you need to get yourself a radio or one of his albums, because he ROCKS) would be the theme song to my experiences as a middle man if they were scripted into a T.V. show. Fact: I’ve been told that I’m a good middle man. Further fact: I think I’m a terrible middle man.

Point being that because I wanted to figure out why Quinn was mad at Sam, and also because I’d been out of a job for a while, I decided to have Quinn come to my house and talk. See if he’d hire me for his bridge to Orem High, and Sam.

He actually said that he preferred that there was no middle person between he and Sam. I was surprised at first. But as he explained, I understood that it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t help either. Quinn felt that if Sam was hinging their seven-year friendship on a small incident with a girl, and Sam refused to talk to him, then he wouldn’t push it. If Sam is a true friend, then he’d be the one to come talk to Quinn. Quinn had tried and tried, and Sam refused to talk willingly. Quinn wanted Sam to get his act together and talk to Quinn on his own. If Sam would only do that due to middle-person influence, then in Quinn’s opinion he wasn’t such a good friend after all.

It was a very discouraging view of Sam, one of my last good friends that I’ve got left (which is a whole movie trilogy of a drama), but it wasn’t the first one. I’d had varying negative views of Sam from others--including his ex that lives in my neighborhood--where he wasn’t such a good guy after all.

Eventually Quinn left, happy that I spoke with him. We rarely talked since he moved, and apparently I was one of the few friends he’s got left in Orem City. I promised to stay out of their conflict.

Quinn left me with a few lessons, though. First, sometimes the absence of a middle man is a good thing. Most of the time, you may need a bridge to the person you’re having problems with. But sometimes you’ve gotta see the true test of your friendship: seeing who’s gonna jump in the river and swim first.

In the end, though, it all goes back to conflicts with miscommunication. In any case, that’s usually why you have a middle man there in the first place. Lots of dog-eat-dog fights begin with a few miscommunicated instances, or misplaced sentences. Miscommunication is what got Sam and that girl all messed up, anyhow.

It’s too bad the human language isn’t perfect. It’s amazing how one little word can have a totally different translation to someone else’s mind. Makes you confused, and relay conjumbled messages. Just like the song, “Middle Man”.

I’d just like to advise anyone who reads this to WATCH YOUR WORDS. Say what you feel—not what you want the person to feel. And validate their interpretation thereof. By gum, people. Whole worlds can be destroyed.

Anyway, I’ve come here now just to type all that up. I’ve left out a bunch, but that’s all I have time to post right now. At this moment in time, I’ve gotta go finish reading “A Separate Peace” for my English class.

All I can say is that I’d better not be up at ungodly hours reading it…