I have always loved tree’s…. As a child I would sit in the tree in my back yard dreaming of being Samantha Steven’s on Bewitched… and as a teenager I would sit in the huge tree out in the woods with my friend Chris talking of things we wanted to be when we moved out of our parents house… It seems to me that tree’s love children to climb on them… sit in them…. And sometimes even die in them…I’m sure the later breaks a tree’s heart… Two years after Chris and I decided to make that tree our “club house”, he put a rope around his neck and jumped from it… He hung there until his brother found him the next day… I had been the one to tell his brother to look there when he came by my house that Sunday looking for him…The day of his funeral other students at school had started to gather to leave school to go up to the funeral home… I stood back away from them…. None of them knew how close of friends we had been… they didn’t know that he and I had shared that tree many times laughing and joking and even once we had kissed each other…. Not in that tree of course… at school while we both stood in the hall alone in front of the shop and home economics class… We had been in the 8^th grade… He had leaned in and gently kissed my mouth and I turned and quickly went into my class…. It was Connie, my cousin, who had been looking out the door and made fun of me when I came in…. Not only did she tell the whole class I had kissed him out in the hall but she refreshed every ones memory that one of his eyes looked off the other way… In front of the class she twirled her index fingers in front of her eyes while puckering her lips and making kissing sounds… I wanted to kill her… instead I just laughed along with them… That day after class I snuck out the back way so I wouldn’t have to see him and I avoided him for a week… Then I went to the tree and we had a short talk about our kiss… He said it didn’t mean anything to him and I had wasted a lot of our tree time thinking that it did… I started to laugh and then everything was ok again….WE had spent a lot of time there… Not once had he EVER tried to tell me that things were bad for him! He never said I want to die! He never said help me! I never knew that he hurt! And to this day I still do not understand why he never said anything to me…. We finished the 8^th grade and that summer he talked a lot about his brother… the foot ball hero…. How he was a little scared of the 9^th grade… and how he didn’t know if he would take art class like he had when we were in middle school… and then one Sunday a few weeks after school started, his football hero brother came by my house looking for him… I was shocked because I didn’t even know that guy knew my name! All the kids gathered and I could hear them saying things like…. “I just can’t believe he’s gone”….. “I liked him a lot”…. “We were really good friends”…. They made me sick! They were lying! They HADN’T KNOWN him! And if they did then they were MAKING FUN OF HIM! My friend LeAnn came over to me and asked me if I wanted to ride with her and do some drugs during the funeral… I said no but did anyway… She had a hand full of those speckled bird eggs and handed me like 4 of them…. I knew it was a bad idea for several reasons but the main one turned out to be the effect it had AFTER the funeral…. We stopped at the What-A-Burger and got a coke and I took 3 of those pills… they were the size of a little robin egg… sounds small huh? Well it wasn’t…. they had the effect of speckled eggs the size of freaking duck eggs! I made it through the funeral and didn’t shed a tear… mostly I was just shaking from the fact of NEVER doing any kind of drug in my life except smoking weed and here I was tripping at my friends funeral who’s dad had been the fucking sheriff of the next town over!… You wouldn’t have believed all the cops! During the drive to the cemetery which WAS in the next county over we took another one of those eggs and my hands and knees were shaking as we stood there at his grave….I looked down at my feet the whole time making it a point not to look up at any of the cops that were there…Of course they didn’t notice me but drugs have a really messed up effect on a kid… I wish kids now a days knew the feeling long before they ever did them (the sick feeling)… and then maybe they’d change there minds about buying a coke at the What-A-Burger and swallowing a few speckled bird eggs……. I saw a man on tractor take his hat off as we drove past and that made me stare at him… I remember we had been to the back of the line and he had waited to put his hat on till the last car had passed…. He sat there…an old man on his tractor… It sat there in his field idling as he sat upon the seat with his hat in his lap…. It was then that I felt like crying but I swallowed the huge lump in my throat, and didn’t…. looking back I think I should have cried… it might have helped release some of the anger I was feeling…. Instead it came out another way… one that I wished had never happened…. After the funeral I remembered all of us decided to meet at the taco place across the street from the high school… (Not the Taco Bell…)…. I saw Connie sitting in a booth with 2 older boys flirting with them and kissing one on the cheek…. She had not went to the funeral.... For those of you who have just joined into the life and times of Sherrena, Connie is my cousin…. Any bad or obnoxious behavior that I ever learned, came from her…She was wild and gave it up to all the boys and taught me and Elizabeth, her step sister and my first cousin, how to smoke and touch a boy where they like it…(wink)…. She waved to me and I sat down with LeAnn in the booth behind her…. She asked how the funeral had been…. I looked at her and said depressing… She laughed and said … I bet it wasn’t as depressing as when he kissed you right on the mouth in the 8^th grade!”… It was then that I said… “You know Connie… it wasn’t as bad as you might make it out to be.”… She said…. “ Yeah right!” and while laughing she held both index fingers up and twirled them around in front of her eyes… finger tips facing out so that my eyes were following them as they were spinning… Now to understand fully what was fixing to happen you must know the sizes of the two of us…. IN THIS CORNER….. ALL IN BLACK…5’3 AND WEIGHING IN AT A 145 LBS. AND VIRTUALLY NO FIGHTING SKILLS…FRESH FROM A FUNERAL….. SHERRENA!…..SHERRENA!…….AND IN “THAT” CORNER……ALL IN TIGHT BLUE JEANS SHOWING OFF HER HEAVING TITS …. 5’9 AND WEIGHING IN AT A MERE 165 LBS AND WITH SEVERAL FIGHTS UNDER HER BELT FROM BEING A BOY FRIEND THIEF… FRESH FROM BEING FUCKED IN THE BOYS CAR SITTING NEXT TOO HER….. CONNIE!…..CONNIE!…LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...... Now I think Connie saw what was coming… I had stood up and was laughing along with her as I came forward… but I don’t think she expected to loose… I think that had never entered her mind… her head bounced off the table twice before I noticed she was knocked out… and then for no reason I pulled out a huge plug of her hair and stuck it in her refried beans…. For that last act I got my ass in some big trouble by my father……. He said you NEVER do a member of the family as dirty as I had done her… And then he demanded to know why I had done such a thing…. “Pulling a chunk of the poor girl’s hair out after you knocked her out!”...... I wanted to say because I hated her at that moment and I was on drugs and my friend was dead and she had made fun of the kiss he had given me…. I wanted to say a lot of things but instead I just sat there with my bottom lip poking out… which my dad never fell for… Me and Connie got over being mad at each other by the next weekend… My dad made me go over and say I was sorry and offer to let her pull a chunk of my hair out…. I said to her through squinted eyes…. “My dad said you could pull some of my hair out if you want…… but I wouldn’t if I were you” and she choose not too…