B.F.F.

Best – Adjective - having the most positive qualities;
Friend - Noun - person you know well & regard with affection & trust;
Forever - Adverb - for a limitless time;
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What makes a ‘best friend’? At an early age we make our friends in one of two ways. The first is a sort of forced friendship because our parents have some friends who also have kids and we are brought together whenever the parents socialize. The second is a friendship out of necessity because we don’t want to be the only kid sitting alone during snack time in kindergarten. Either way we end up with a ‘friend’, but what causes one friend to become ‘the best friend’ and how many ‘best friends’ can one person have? Are best friends replaced? Are people ever notified that their position of ‘best friend’ has been filled by a 3rd party and that their services as ‘best friend’ will no longer be needed? Maybe they could apply for a position in the ‘regular friend’ category as long as they’re ok with the demotion within the organization. By definition you would think that a person can only have one ‘best friend’ I mean unless the qualities that are being judged in order to determine ‘the best’ are found to be 100% equal in every possible way then there can only be on ‘best’ right?



I have had a few ‘best friends’ in my 36 years of life. That’s not to say that I don’t consider all of the past position holders to still be my ‘friends’, but something happened during the course of the friendship that severed that bond that defined them a friend as ‘the best’. I remember living in a 3 family house on Cote Avenue in Woonsocket when I was real young. I don’t remember both the other families, but one of them was the Gagne family and they had a daughter who was one of my earliest friends. There was also a family next door that I believe had 2 or 3 kids and we used to play out in the back yard sometimes. I remember Angie crying on one August day in1977 because it had just been announced that Elvis Presley had died, but I was already preoccupied with Kiss and the wonders of heavy metal to care. I couldn’t remember the names of the kids next door for the life of me and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never seen them again, but oddly enough a few years after we moved from the 3 family house the Gagne’s moved in next door and they were our neighbors again.

Around the same time we lived on Cote Avenue and probably for awhile after we moved to our new house on Achille Street, also in Woonsocket, I had some ‘forced’ friends that came in the form of Brad & Marissa, the son & daughter of Art and Linda Everly who were my mom & dad’s friends. Art & Linda, who earned the unofficial title of ‘Uncle Art’ and ‘Auntie Linda’ to avoid me calling them by first names or being overly formal and calling them Mr. and Mrs., lived in North Providence. I remember it being SO far away and it taking SO long when we would go visit. Reality check…. It was about 15-20 minutes even with traffic! We would go over quite often and see them around the holidays and for birthdays and stuff. The first time I ever slept in a tent was during a sleepover in their back yard. The first time I ever played with ‘Shrinky Dinks’ was over there. I also remember brad having this awesome toy gun. It was a huge green army gun that came with a helmet with visor and a bunch of other accessories. I don’t remember anything else specific about it except that it said “Monkey Division” on it. Wish I could still play with that gun! The Everly’s also had a really cool gingerbread house that they somehow preserved and would put out on display every Christmas. One of my most awkward moments actually happened at their house around Christmas. I guess I had been watching a lot of Happy Days and told my mom, “I want one of those sweaters with the letter on it”. Now I was talking about a cardigan sweater with a varsity letter on it like Richie, Potsie & Ralph Malph wore, but that was somehow lost in the translation because I was confused when I received a green pullover sweater with my initials embroidered on the chest as a Christmas gift from ‘Uncle Art’ and ‘Auntie Linda’. Alas I never got my varsity sweater.



After awhile we didn’t really see the Everly’s anymore. I don’t know why or what happened. Not sure if they moved or if there was a falling out between them and my parents, but no more “Monkey Division” for me. We did however move on to the Marques, Victor, Madeline, Luke & Elena. Elena was affectionately referred to as Pete because when Madeline was pregnant Luke wanted a baby brother and when Elena was born he refused to acknowledge that she was a girl and called her Pete for pretty much her entire life and eventually the rest of the family joined in. Anyway…. the Marques lived on a farm in North Smithfield. The ride to their house was another one that seemed like a 3 day excursion when in reality it too was only about 20 minutes. We used to go over for barbeques and other events. I think I might have slept over there a couple of times, but I’m not positive. I rode a horse for the first time at the Marques farm with Victor holding the reins the whole time. I also remember they had an in ground pool and one time during an argument Luke threw a soccer ball at Elena, who was in the pool with some friends. The ball hit the water and popped up smacking her right in the face. The pool immediately looked like a shark attack had occurred as the blood mixed with the chlorinated water. The Marques family eventually moved to Florida and we visited them once or twice down there on vacations, but that was about it.



By this time I was in school fulltime at Mercy Mount Country Day in Cumberland, RI. It’s a private Catholic school and I’m not Catholic nor do I practice any religion for that matter. During my first year at Mercy Mount I met a bunch of people that would be my friends for the next 6 years or so. Each one was my ‘friend’ for different reasons and some were closer friends than others. I remember Christian Mottrom, he was one of the class clowns in 2nd grade. There was one day that he wouldn’t stay in his seat and Mrs. Carvellie the teacher warned him and then literally taped him to his chair. He was wrapped in tape around the chair & attached desk and couldn’t get up. Imagine if a teacher did that to a kid today? Holy lawsuit Batman! Christian wasn’t one of my closer friends, but he did give me my first exposure to Ozzy Osborne when he let me borrow his ‘Speak of the Devil’ LP. Jimmy McVeigh was also one of my friends. He was really into sports and since I knew almost nothing about sports I just followed along with anything he said about them. I started collecting baseball cards at first because of Jimmy and kept it up because of a few other friends. I had a lot more friends at Mercy Mount that came to my birthday parties and invited me to theirs. I remember seeing Josh Hoxie quite a bit. There was also Natalie West, Jackie Clark, Monica Vigerstol, Chrissy Gianetti, Mike Pergola and a bunch more.



It was at Mercy Mount that I met one of the first people that could be considered a ‘best friend’. I’m not sure how I started talking to him or what we had in common at first but Kurt Brenner and I were almost inseparable for most of those early school years. I would spend a lot of time at his house and my parents became good friends with his parents, Bill and Jan, who I still refer to as Mr. & Mrs. Brenner to this day. Kurt also has a sister, Catherine that I was a good friend as well. I learned how to skateboard at Kurt’s house, got to drive his go-kart around the driveway, watched tons of movies and played with pretty much ever conceivable toy from the 80’s including the USS Flag, the monstrous GI Joe aircraft carrier! Our parents were such good friends that it was the four of them that opened Music Mania, the record store that I would eventually meet even more friends at. I’m not really sure what happened that caused the cut back in the amount of time I hung around at the Brenner house, but the times I spent there were a lot of fun.



When we first moved to Achille Street it was pretty much baron. There was our house and the house my grandmother & grandfather lived in and that was about it. Across from my house was an abandoned factory where they used to make cement pipes for sewers and stuff, but by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade they had knocked it down, cleaned the land and built 4 almost identical houses in its place. They also built houses on the lots on each side my house and on Prince Street which was an adjacent street. Once all these houses were sold and occupied I had another new crop of friends. There was Angie Gagne who used to live upstairs from us on Cote Avenue, Mike Cournoyer, Tom Oulette, Chet Oberhelman & Roger Lebrun. I spent a lot more time with Mike then with any of the others and around this time he was probably my ‘best friend’ of the time, but the whole group of us were all good friends. Chet & Roger were actually a lot older then the rest of us, probably by 20+ years, but they were kids at heart and we spent many summer days playing street hockey and volley ball with Chet or basketball with Roger. Most of the time I was at Mikes house was spent playing with GI Joe, Star Wars or He-Man action figures, watching wrestling or trading baseball cards. We actually had a couple of ‘baseball card shows’ in his basement and convinced some kids from school to come and spend money on ‘grab bag’ packs of cards we put together knowing they were worth a fraction of what we were selling them for.

I actually spoke with Mike a couple of weeks ago through Facebook and was embarrassed to find out that he lived across the street from me for a lot longer than I thought he did. We started getting into different things and spending less time together and in my head it was because he moved, but in reality it was because I moved to different things. It was not then and is not now a slight on Mike at all and hopefully he knows that. I think that it was meeting up with my next group of friends and really expanding on my love of music that separated me from Mike, but I could be wrong… hell I’m the one that thought he moved away 4 years before he actually did!



My next group of friends was the Woonsocket/Blackstone Dungeons & Dragons playing, acid dropping headbangers that I spent many a Friday nights with at Roller Kingdom (see previous blog) with. I’m not sure who from that group I met first, but the one that sticks out the most is Dave Key. Dave had a family, but was kind of a ‘drifter’ for some reason. My first significant encounter with Dave was one Friday late afternoon before heading up to Roller Kingdom. He wanted to take a shower and we were closest to my house so I went in and asked my mom and she said yes. Dave took a shower and within a few months was living in the finished attic room at my house. My mom had taken him in, not as a "charity case", but more to help him out. He had been in some trouble when he was younger and my mom thought she could help him straighten out.

Anyway it was through Dave that I became good friends with Ray Addam, Hans Grumbach, Ron Howard, Janet Clayton, Jay Garfield & Hans Benanison. I was also friendly, but not that close with Neil Busky, Neil Maltaise & a few others. While none of these people qualified as a "best friend" I did meet my next "best friend" while hanging out with them.



Mary-Ellen Boutiette was one of the girls that hung around with the Roller Kingdom headbangers and it’s only in hindsight that I see she was my best friend at the time. Before I had a car I would walk to Blackstone to see her, we would play Super Mario Brothers while on the phone racing to see who could finish first. Then after I got a car, a Bitchin' Camaro by the way, we hung out even more. I remember a few parties and one day at some sort of mini water park. Mary-Ellen even came to my 10th grade "prom" because I said I wasn't going to go so she ‘forced’ me to go. Unfortunately I was to shy and/or embarrassed to even dance with her once.

During the time I hung out with Mary-Ellen I was pretty close to a lot of her friends too. There was Becky Ryan, Malda Tykes, Allison Dubious, Jennifer Ray, Nikki Hebert and a few others. But eventually it became time to move on again.



Next up were Mike Garneau, Eric "Frenchy" Cameron, Keith Garneau & Liam Gray. There were others that I became friends with through those guys and eventually became really good friends with like Mike Brousseau & John Gilbert, but they came into the picture a little later. Mike & Frenchy I met at Music Mania and they are the two that formerly introduced me to punk rock and got me actually playing the bass guitar my dad had bought me. I hung around with those guys almost everyday for a long time and met a bunch of other people through them. When the band we had 'broke up' I started spending more time with Liam and it was through him that I got closer to Mike Brousseau, John Gilbert, reconnected with Kurt Brenner and eventually met Scott Reber, Michelle Milot, Jocelyn Russo, Doug Cyr, Michelle Lovedae and the rest of the Woonsocket high school punk rock crew.



It gets to a point where everyone & everything start to blend together... hanging around with assorted people from different groups at the same time and groups overlapping through multiple time periods. In fact there’s one person that overlapped from very early on in this story until the present. Mike Byrne. If you're reading this there’s a pretty good chance you know Mike or at the absolute least you know someone that knows Mike. My mom has known Mike since he was pretty young because she knew his family. Then as coincidence would have it Mike, along with Scott Almeida/Gardner (aka Mohawk Scott) was the first person to walk into Music Mania before the store was officially open. My dad chose not to say anything to Mike who was dressed all in black with a huge swooping devilock and Scott in full punk/bondage attire, mohawk fully erect and carrying an umbrella on a very sunny summer day, about the fact that the store wasn’t open yet. Years later I would hang out with Mike quite a lot and let me tell you it was always an adventure with Mike!



There was also a whole bunch of other people from Blackstone that overlapped from group to group. I remember hanging around with Chris Giguere, Chris Bolbi, Russ “Skully” Carter and a few other people at the same time. There was also Bob Lewis who was from Blackstone. I hung out with him a few times with Mike Byrne and some of the other Blackstone guys. We actually went on some crazy ‘mountain climbing’ hike in Diamond Hill State Park and I’m not even sure where we ended up! I think we might have gotten ice cream when it was all over though. I also ran into Bob Lewis, once again with Mike Byrne, but this time with Liam, Mike Brousseau, Gary Olson, Michelle Milot and a few other people. We all just showed up at Bob’s house unannounced one night and kind of took over. Someone was trying to eat fish out of an aquarium in the living room. Someone was peeing in the icemaker of the freezer. A couple of people smashed a jar or pickles in the basement… it was mayhem. Until Bobs parents came home! Apparently Bob was grounded and no one was allowed in the house. We filed out single file like a scene straight out of a movie. A few years later I got to hear that story from a different view. I ended up dating a girl that dated Bob during that time period and apparently meek little quiet Bob had gotten in a lot of trouble and then taken it out on his girlfriend… not cool!



I won’t even get into the Jamie Ciffo stories that involve Mike Byrne because I think Mike deserves his own blog entry. I will just say LOL at the espresso machine, the bowling ball, Burger Buddies, “sitting in the oven”, picking up Leigh hitch hiking, check cashing places, trading CDs for cars, Doctor Rhythm, the girls that played his hockey game and spit on the table, etc. etc. etc. If you know Mike, you know what I’m talking about!



Ok… where was I? I don’t remember exactly how I met Jeremy Girard, but I think it might have been through Sean Piggott. Sean had sung for a band called Anesthesia that had Mike Garneau in it. When Anesthesia broke up Sean started singing for Decadence (not the Boston Hardcore band) and Jeremy was in a band called Toxic Waste. I think I might have formerly met Jeremy after Toxic Waste and near the beginning of his next band, Malpractice. Malpractice was Jeremy, Leigh Gilbert, Al Fontaine, Matt Raines & Troy Warzawski. I spent more time with Jeremy than anyone else back then and we had a lot of hysterical times a few that also involved…. Surprise, Mike Byrne! But I was also good friends with Leigh and Al. In another odd coincidence I found out that I had actually met Al before. He shared the limousine that I took with Mary-Ellen to the 10th grade prom. I’m pretty sure we didn’t talk at all the whole ride, even though we were in the car alone for awhile. I’m also pretty sure part of the reason we didn’t talk was because I was in awe of Al’s white tuxedo with purple tie & cummerbund and his sweet, sweet mustache!



I met a bunch of other people though spending time with Jeremy, Leigh and Al and we had a bunch of times where we crossed paths with people from my past friend groups as well. I met Jenn Bourget through Jeremy and I’m eternally grateful for that. I met Brian Taft, Tim Belisle & Dave Sasquatch from hanging around with Leigh. I met Paulie ‘Kid Maple’ Fontaine & Lauren Healey hanging around with Al. I got a lot closer to Scott Reber partially because of all of them. I think more importantly than any of that I’ve had enough adventures both good and bad with those guys to fill 100 blogs. Beckie Mullen, BVC, Pantera & Skid Row, House of Pain, Biohazard, getting kicked out of the high school talent show, Blades of Steel, Roller Kingdom, The Getta, trash bags full of party hats & popcorn, skipping first period and going for breakfast, The Toy Box, Creepy Crawl, the New Jersey Star Wars convention, trombone wake up calls, The Big Gig, Gwar shows, Addams Family Pinball… I don’t know where I would be without them. They stuck by me even when I didn’t always stick by them and that’s what best friends do.



There are a lot of other people from a lot of other times and places that I am proud to call my friends. Jen Tobin, who was the best person I could have met at that point in my life. Roger Cadman who liked me even though I carried a Han Solo blaster to work with me (the Stormtrooper rifle was too big to carry). The whole Newbury Comics crew… Lisa B., Art, Chris Leone, Rasheed, Andrea, Pat A., Tommy T. and a ton of other people.

Mark McKay who was a huge influence on my life before I had ever met him and then literally changed my life after we became friends. All the rest of the Slapshot guys, past & present, Chris, Choke, Ed, Mike, Steve, Hank, John, Jaime and Jonathan. Plus all the other great people I met because of Slapshot like Ian, Buddha & Rob, everyone in Some Kind of Hate, Energy, All For Nothing, Champion, 7 Seconds, Sick of it All…. Okay…. I’m not really friends with guy in 7 Seconds or Sick of it All, but I did get to meet them and hang out!



There was a ton of awesome people that I met because of all the time in BME & BVC. Monty, Bill, Justin & the rest of the P13 crew, Jay Kobalt who is one of my favorite people on the planet, King Mike L, Fasad, Thrill, Paulie P., Ricci, Mario, Dave Lysik, NYC Joe, Berry & Thor, John Moss and countless other people and other bands.

I also have a group of people that I consider close friends even though I’ve never met most of them. All the regular posters on the Thorp Records message board (aka the Thorp Warriors) are amazing people that I spent a lot of time with each week. BD, Clevo, Gavin, CR83, LifeIsABitch, Discipline, Shawn Refuse, Mike Resist, Furly, Chad Beantown, NewBreedBrian, BKT, Panzerkreuzer, ShootingsScars, Reverend Paulie, Bombidol, Mark Lind, & MikeFromInhuman. As much as I hate being there, I even have a few friends at work. Talking to Jay, Butters, TJ, Jason, Kevin and a few other people do make the day a little easier to deal with.



So in closing, what is it that makes a best friend? Best friends mean it when they say come over anytime, here is a house key. A best friend tries to make you feel a little better about your video game skills even though he probably thinks you are really are pretty bad. A best friend will help you build a shelf to hold your records just because he can. A best friend will take a night off from work to hang out even though he’s busy, because you need to talk. A best friend buys you ice cream because she knows it will make you feel better on a bad day.

Thanks guys…