Social Issues and Friendship - Essay Example

 Personal Experience Essay I always figured the friends I had growing up would be my friends forever as they were the people who had seen me from my most sincere and vulnerable moments, that is childhood. One such friend was Melanie, she lived two houses away and we went to the same school as well as sharing most of the classes. We did everything together up until high school when she had to move away because her mother got a job out of town. It was a sad moment for the both of us as they were packing to leave; I could not imagine not seeing her the following day in the bus as we head to school or not having her around during our swimming classes every Saturday morning. But we promised each other we would talk every day keep up on each other’s lives and try as much to convince our parents to allow us to visit each other over the holidays. It all seemed easy enough and our friendship was going to last forever. Little did we know fate had completely different paths for us. Ideally, Melanie and her family were supposed to come back after two years once her mother’s work contract was over. But once those two years were over, they did not return and by then I was headed to college. We tried to keep in touch but it proved challenging as I was overwhelmed with studies and extra-curricular activities. We had not managed to visit each other during the two years and she seemed to also be busy with college. Then one day she called me out of the blue insisting that she wanted us to meet and she would be in town over the weekend. I was too excited to hear from her that I did not ask any questions, I simply asked for a place and time and looked forward to our reconnecting. Two days before our meeting, I sat in a Statistics class too distracted to pay attention. All I could do was imagine how our meeting would go, how she would make fun of my short hair. I wondered what she had done with hers, we always wanted to color our hairs something crazy while in college but I had stopped wanting that. The lecturer disrupted my thoughts as he called out my name. I raised my head up from the scribbling I was doing on my notebook to respond. Next to the lecturer were these two men who wanted to talk me outside the classroom. I walked out grateful for a chance to walk out as I felt I was not being productive in the class. Once outside, I got the most shocking news of my life and up to this day I still have trouble coming to terms with what the two men told me. As it turns out Melanie’s mother was a known drug dealer who had been under investigation for the past five years. What’s more she had roped her daughter into the business and her father had passed on under mysterious circumstances. I felt dizzy and my stomach felt funny as the two men who identified themselves as federal agents relayed this to me. It all seemed surreal and I began to walk away. One of the agents pulled me back and told me they needed my help in getting hold of Melanie or her mother. They had been tracking my phone calls and realized that we had been in communication and planned to meet over the weekend. I remember repeating to the federal agents that this all had to be a misunderstanding as the Melanie I knew was afraid of spiders and the dark and had ambitions to become a chef. They proceeded to show me photos of Melanie’s mother meeting with known criminals and emails that had been exchanged between her and other ‘persons of interest’ the reference used for potential suspects or known acquaintances of criminals. My body went numb as it dawned me at that moment that everyone in the neighborhood back when we were kids always wondered what Melanie’s mother did for a living. She always said she was in the business of procurement and logistics for a South American company. I spent the rest of the day at my college dormitory trying to make sense of the whole situation. I thought I knew everything about Melanie that there was no way my childhood best friend was a criminal, worse still a drug dealer hiding from federal agents. The two men needed for me to lead them to Melanie so I was to act normal and just wait for them to swoop in and arrest her. Being the loyal friend I am, I decided that there was no way I was going to hand in my childhood best friend to the police. There had to be good explanation to the whole situation, I just needed to have a sit down with Melanie and clarify everything. I did not attend any of my other classes that day; instead I went planned out how I would discreetly meet with Melanie. I looked for a phone booth away from school and called Melanie using the number she had called me with to plan our meeting. She responded and I subtly told her that I would not be available that Saturday and we should instead meet on Friday evening. She agreed and the following day being a Friday we met. She then proceeded to tell me a hypothetical story about a girl who made a wrong choice but for the right person. Family was the most important thing to this girl, she went on. At that instance I told her about the federal agents and told her to leave town and never contact me again. She said she would find me in the future and explain the whole scenario to me properly and that I would understand. I simply walked away embroiled in a combination of anger plus sadness. One can never truly know everything about someone. I learned that sometimes we live in denial about the people we care about because the truth is too difficult to accept. Looking back there are instances I can point out about Melanie and her family that were suspicious but I never questioned them because after all she was my childhood best friend.ersonal Experience Essay Read More