My Greatest Joy

Jeffrey Mc Leod
English 127
Dr. Grant
6/1/2010
(3) Your Greatest Joy
I have done a lot in eighteen years which is how long I’ve lived upon this planet and yet I also have done so very little. There is however, one single thing I am joyous about, my best friend Ben. Since I was born, Ben has been there for me, quite literally because our mothers became friends while they were both pregnant with he and I.
Ben was born exactly nine months before I was on December 21 of 1990 while I was born on September 21 of 1991. We were always together, not a day went by that we didn’t see each other in the first years of our young lives. Once we were old enough to enter school, our parents put us into separate worlds, he in a private Christian school, I in a public elementary school.
The few ours that we were in school, we may not have been able to see each other, but just like anything else, time goes on and we would be released and would meet up at home to play. Most of out school life we were separated and upon entering Jr. High, things changed. We began to grow apart and I, Being weaker then Ben, began to allow the views of others to sway my feelings of him. I disliked my greatest friend! Fate would not have it though, for little did I know, Ben had managed to get kicked out of his school and mine was the only option his parents had left to place him.
My last year in Mount Gleason Middle School, Ben arrived to finish out the 8th grade. He had been thrust back into my life and I was mortified. On the first day, Ben was beyond popular with almost everyone around him and he ignored them when he caught sight of me. Ben came right up to me and hugged me tight. Needless to say, I was shocked! I had been so unfair to him, treated him badly, even avoided him and here he was, still embracing me like a brother! I had been shown the error in my selfish ways.
Ben and I finished middle school and moved on to High School together. I had been given back my best friend even though I did not deserve the grace of his smile. I was so thankful throughout all four years and lived a happy life even with all the high school drama. He was always at my back and never let me fall. In our senior year we had become closer then ever, we even founded a group of friends we named the Brothers. We went from 2 to 6 in no time. We all couldn’t have been happier with our live and so karma threw us a curve ball that almost struck us out.
I was at my mother’s house (divorced parents) and my phone rang with ‘Ben’s Dad’ on the screen. Figuring Kevin simply wanted to know where his son was, I answered.
“Hello?” I said; ready to say I didn’t know where Ben was.
“Jeffrey?” Kevin spoke in a sad tone, “I have to tell you something…”
“Ben’s been shot…he’s in the ER right now…”
Nothing could have prepared me, I cried harder then I ever had, even more then when my family tore apart at age 9. Ben had been shot in the neck for reasons no one knew, not even Ben himself! There were no words, just a car, a gunshot, and screeching tires. My mom took me to the hospital and I brought him funny shirts for gifts. Seeing him on that bed, words cannot do him justice. I was heart broken to see the greatest person in my life in that state.
Ben would recover and even move on to join the Navy in college all the while with a bullet lodged in the muscle of his neck where it would never leave. The doctors had told us there could be no operation without damage to the spinal column. We are still best friends, brothers to this day. I am lucky, my greatest joy is that I still have my best friend even when the powers that be almost let him go on and leave me without him. I still have Ben and that is my single greatest joy in my entire live now and forever.