The crisp bitter winter air greeted my daughter Emily and I, as we stepped out into the raging blizzard. Emily cheerfully grabbed her pink sled and skillfully navigated her way down the steep hill that was covered in soft white fluffy snow.  I, on the other hand, carefully inched my way down the snow filled driveway, reaching for the frosted mailbox. My hand came out with a brand new copy of the “New York Times.”  I walked back up the treacherous driveway, and grabbed a cup of my wife’s famous hot chocolate that filled anyone with warmth.  I settled down on my tan leather recliner in front of the crackling fire.  “The New York Times, December 21st 2015” Blah Blah Blah “Nothing good in the paper today” I thought, right when I saw a familiar name.  My cherry red mug, was like a bomb exploding as it crashed to the floor in a million pieces, the hot chocolate inside spilled staining the carpet.  None of that mattered though, what mattered was what was in the paper.  The paper read “Joey Smith killed overseas”
Joey Smith was my best friend from kindergarten.  Through elementary, middle, and high school we were practically inseparable. In college he had married my twin sister Becky.  I skimmed over the article.  “Joey Smith a Connecticut native, enlisted in the army last month and was sent on deployment immediately following bootcamp… He was killed in a Humvee attack yesterday… he leaves behind a wife and 2 children.”  When I finished the article I was still in disbelief, but it did make me think of my little war with Joey in the summer of ‘83.
The day was June 3rd 1983, a Thursday. The sun was shining brightly overhead, the sky was a vibrant shade of baby blue.  It was the second to last day of 7th grade, and we had final exams to worry about.  “What’s the square route of -4?” Becky’s annoyed voice asked.
“-2” I guessed.
“It’s not a real number” she said practically crying.  Becky was little Miss Know It All. She got all A’s and beat me on every test; these exams were going to be a walk in the park for her.  “Ready for school?”
“Never.” I replied sarcastically.  We walked out the door, me in the lead with Becky behind me.  I leaped from the second to last step like I always did and Becky followed more royally.  As we walked passed the driveway Joey’s tall athletic figure appeared at the grand entrance to the house next door. 
“You two study last night?” Joey’s voice asked with its usual joking tone.
“Yeah” Becky said, “but Scott knows nothing.”
“Let’s not go down that road”, I said.
The low rumble of the bus came around the corner, signaling the end of our conversation. We quickly boarded, and Joey and I sat next to each other as usual. “My dad got us a snow blower engine for our go kart.” I said enthusiastically
“There was nothing wrong with the old engine… until you BLEW IT UP!”
“Oops” I said “Hey how was baseball last night?” I asked to draw attention away from my mistakes with the go kart.
“It was great. I threw a no hitter, and hit the game winning home run in the ninth.”
“We lost 3-4 against Maine.” We were at school at this point and blabbered all the way to homeroom, our teacher was Ms. Kastro, the meanest oldest worst teacher in the school. The class is always silent. After the announcements we had math together also with Ms. Kastro. She handed out the dreaded tests and we began. I was about half way through when I got stumped, I leaned over and whispered into John’s ear asking for the answer to number 56.
“BARRY, SMITH TO MY DESK” she screamed so loud it shook the whole school.
“Joey was asking me for the answers” I blurted out before I had time to think.
“Is this true Smith?”
Joey stuttered which was a huge mistake.
“Well then I guess we have a cheater; Smith your belt and test please” He handed over his test which her fat fingers tore into a million pieces.  “The belt Smith”, and he handed that over, too. She wrapped the end around her hand. “You know the drill” her pudgy face smiled.  Joey set his hands down on the table touching each other, and as quick as a cat Ms. Kastro raised the belt and brought it crashing down across his hands with a sickening “Crack.” It was all I could do to keep from telling the truth, but I’d been whipped before for cheating and I knew what it felt like. Joey tuned away from me and didn’t look at me until the next morning at the bus stop.
Becky was wearing her nicest dress with her hair in a perfect up doo for the last day of school. At the bus stop, Joey was late and when he got there we stood awkwardly silent, I glanced at his oozing scab worn across both hands, and when the bus came he glared at me quickly, the hatred wild in his eyes.  The last day felt like forever going so slowly without talking to Joey at all. I thought it was just a phase and we would grow out of it, but boy was I wrong, and I found this out the hard way the next morning.
The beginning of summer always marked the beginning of my lawn mowing business, so naturally I got up early. I ate a hardy breakfast of eggs and sausage, and went outside. I walked slowly around my white house to the half built wood shed that I adopted and now housed all my crazy inventions, my go kart, and of course my “SB cutting”  push mower.  I quickly changed the spark plug, put new gas in, cleaned the air filter, and she started right up.
My first client was Mrs. Hafer, our 90 year old neighbor.  I lazily pushed the cherry red mower around the block to Mrs. Hafer’s yard. Her grass was at last 5 inches tall, but once I got into it I worked like a well-oiled machine.  Soon the air around Mrs. Hafer’s house was filled with the smell of freshly cut grass. As I went to settle the bill though, I saw a familiar face poke around the bush, Joey’s. I turned to walk toward him when he yelled “Bombs Away”. Suddenly there must have been 20 boys around all armed with a whopping pile of cow manure, and dog poop.  They all had gloves on and started throwing poop at me; I was hit from all angles, a sitting duck out there by myself. My once white shirt was now stained brown. The once peaceful smell of freshly cut grass was replaced by the horrendous smell of poop, the lawn was filled with hidden treasures everywhere.
I spent the rest of the first day of summer cleaning up Mrs. Hafer’s yard, and vomiting occasionally from the mixture of smell and picking up moist warm cow manure.  I found myself that night in my basement trying to salvage my tennis shoes when I heard the clatter of Becky coming down stairs to talk to me.
“What happened between you and Joey?”
“Nothing”
“Don’t lie to me Scott, we’re twins, I can tell when you are lying. You just lied to me.”
“Well” I told her everything about how I asked him for answers, then blamed him, and how I felt terrible about it. Half an hour later we sat there starring at each other.
“How are you going to get him back?”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’? You, the great Scott Barry, are just going to sit around and wait for this to work itself out. You never do this; you are always getting in people’s faces and trying to solve problems that you have absolutely nothing to do with. You have all those projects outside and you have the opportunity to not only make something from those and solve a huge problem in your life.  So tell me Scott, are you just going to sit this one out or are you going to solve your little problem?”
I wanted to say ‘no’ but Becky’s brilliant blue eyes gleamed in anger, so I said “I’ll do whatever it takes to make our friendship better.”  The truth was though that I wanted nothing in making Joey’s life worse, I just wanted to be his friend again. So there was no way I was going to act on what Becky said.
The next day I found myself waking to the sound of my clattering alarm clock.  I ate some healthy, crunchy cereal and grabbed my mower knocking on house after house, but everyone had a freshly cut lawn. I finally asked an elderly man who had cut his grass, he thought for a minute, his face contorted with thought when he finally said “A young boy about your age, named Joey Smith.”
It was official at this point:  I was at war with Joey.  I knew what I was going to do. I had made a project last year that won 1st prize at the science fair and I would couple it up with the most disgusting thing I could think of.
I raced home, and found the long barrel of my potato gun and pulled it out of my pile of junk. I hooked it up to my air compressor and filled the canister. I loaded the barrel with a freshly picked potato and set up my target range. I settled on the ground with the long barrel pointed at the target, I turned the valve and the potato rocketed out of the end of my gun in a cloud of compressed air.  It was a direct hit, a bullseye. The yellow bullseye had been demolished.  My gun was ready but a potato was terrible ammunition.  I headed for the docks on my navy blue Schwinn 10 speed where I paid $5 for 3, 5 gallon pales full of Chum.  I rummaged around my house for balloons. When I found them I filled 86 of them with the raw meat and fish gore. I went to bed that night filled with excitement, for tomorrow was going to be fun.
I awoke at 8:03 to the deep, roaring rumble of Joeys dad’s lime green ‘68 Plymouth Roadrunner leaving with the whole family inside. I snuck over the fence that divided our houses and easily opened the solid oak door with the brass key kept under their “WELCOME” mat.  I put 53 Balloons filled with the disgusting chum randomly in Joey’s house, set to explode when disturbed.  The 53 balloons in the house was bad enough but this was our infamous war, so I set up a tripod on my roof, just out of sight of Joey’s sparkling pool, and armed myself with the remaining 33 balloons and my potato gun. I waited for the familiar sound of the Road Runner’s 383 engine, and when I heard it I climbed up to my roof with a pair of binoculars and watched the scene unfold before me. Joey opened the door first being splattered by chum, he cursed and glared at my house. When the rest of his family went inside, they were all yelling and screaming because of the totally gross situation that had presented itself.  After 45 minutes of yelling and screaming, Joey and his family were finally done with dealing with the exploding chum balloons. So joey wet out back to catch some UV rays, or so he thought.  I loaded my gun with the balloons and took aim, directly at Joey’s stomach. I breathed out and pulled the trigger, the balloon smashed leaving joey covered in fish guts. He was too startled to move, so I hit him again, and again.  The fish blood covered Joey’s blonde hair. He had nowhere to run, so strike after strike, Joey and his yard got covered with chum, until the smell was too unbearable, and he hurled.  Just as he finished, and his mouth was still open I launched a balloon into his mouth exploding leaving nowhere to go but down into his stomach.  I retreated after he vomited, and ran straight to Becky’s room to tell her about my victory in the “Battle of Chum.”  She didn’t react the way I thought after her recent explosion of fury.
“I can’t believe you did that Scott, you’re his friend you should never do that to anybody.”
“But I thought you wanted me to fight this battle?”
“Not like this, though you should have just gone over there and apologized”
I was too mad to care; I stormed out. If Becky didn’t want me to fight this battle, who cared? The whole summer entailed the two of us fighting, nonstop.  When school started up though we put our fighting on hold that is until October 3rd Becky’s and my birthday.  The 3rd of October was also picture day.  I had dressed up in my normal dress shirt and tie.  Becky was in a turquoise dress, with her blonde hair falling to her soldiers.  Our mom snapped what felt like 100 pictures of us before we left for the bus. I was first out the door on the dull and overcast day.  I leaped from the second to last step, and reached the ground just before Becky became visible in the doorway.  As she started descending the stairs, Joey came bounding across the yard yelling and screaming for Becky to stop, but it was too late. She stepped on the final step releasing a giant balloon filled with chum.
“AHHHHHHHHH”, Becky’s blood curdling scream was easily heard for miles, her once pretty and primped hair was filled with fish guts.  Her dress was stained with blood. She stood motionless, the only movement coming from the lone tear that escaped her blue eyes. When she spoke, her voice sounded innocent and weak. “You two have been causing everybody in our neighborhood pain, and stress for the past 5 months, you haven’t spoken to each other since that day.  Do you two even know what you’re fighting about?”
“No” we both spoke in unison. “Let’s get you washed up Becky”, Joey said after a few moments of silence. Becky walked upstairs to the blue bathroom where she took a shower while Joey and I talked our problems out downstairs in the living room.
I spoke first. “I’m sorry I cheated like that and blamed you.”
“I’m sorry I did all those mean things to you and took all of your business.”
“It’s all right, we both had it coming.” I stuck my hand out and we performed our secret, best friend handshake.
Once Becky had changed into her second best dress and had her hair perfected, the three of us then walked back to school, as friends reunited.
I guess when you’re in middle school you don’t realize how important friendship is until you lose your best friend.