One of my early childhood friends had a major influence on my life, in a way he surely doesn’t know. It happened in a single moment on the last day I saw him, well over 30 years ago.
David and I met in the first grade, I think, and after a day or two of wary circling, we quickly became friends. He was always more edgy and brash than I was, willing to stick his tongue out (or flip his finger) at authority. He was also something of a country boy. I was the more thoughtful and intellectual of the two, and we complimented each other nicely. After a while we were spending a lot of time together, both at school and at each others’ houses afterwards.
David’s home life was different from mine. His father was a Vietnam vet, a good guy but whose moods I somehow would never understand. I don’t remember him being around very often. IIRC, David’s mother worked during the day (like mine); he and I were often left to our own devices. If there was anyone around at his house, it was his (much) older sister — she must have been sixteen or seventeen at the time.1 She seemed to be the major figure in the household, at least when I was there.
A few years after David and I met, his family moved away (from northern Virginia) to North Carolina. I was seriously upset about losing him. A while after he left, our moms arranged for me to visit him over a long weekend.
After traveling for hours by bus,2 I was picked up from the station by David and his mother. It was a rather unsettling experience for me. His family had moved onto a house distinctly not in the suburbs. They had a good bit of land, with no other houses nearby. His new friends spoke with a funny accent. They were very nice to me, but also seemed like they were from a totally different culture.3
Since moving to the new place, David had also been given his own gun. He showed it to me — a .410 gauge (shotgun). Cool! I was not a stranger to guns, having been around them in my grandfather’s house on several summer visits.
The last day of my visit, David and I spent a few hours playing around with his shotgun.4 I think it was the first time I’d actually fired one, and the kick was startling and a bit painful. But I didn’t show any sign of pain and was a quick learner, in no time blasting away the cans he laid out for me.
At some point that day, he motioned up to a branch in a tree. A juvenile bird — a sparrow, I think — was perched there. David said something encouraging to me, I don’t remember exactly what… “Hey, I’ll bet you can get ‘im.”
Ohhh, but I could…
I took aim at that little bird and fired. I guess I didn’t hit her too cleanly, because I remember her still moving on the ground as we ran up. She was flapping her wings in little spastic motions, as if trying to fly. After a while she stopped.
David was excited: You did it!
But all I remember was a horrible sad and sinking feeling. What did I do??
The memory of that bird’s last minute of life replayed through my head repeatedly that night. What did I do? And why?
I remember nothing more of my visit that weekend with David, or of the trip home. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since that day, many decades ago.
Nothing obvious about my life changed the day I returned home. Or the week or the month following. But thinking about it in retrospect, something in me clearly changed direction. And a year or so later, at the seeming drop of a hat, I went vegetarian. We can chat about that some other time…
Footnotes:
1 I’m quite sure that David’s older sister was a real hottie, but at the time I was too young to appreciate it 
2 The actual journey is a story for another day. I can’t even imagine sending my 9 or 10 year old kid hundreds of miles on a bus ride — alone! — but hey, times are different now.
3 One of my nights there we played Spin the Bottle with a bunch of David’s new friends. I think that was the first time I really kissed a girl. Woo hoo! She was a couple of years older than me, and I still have a striking recollection of my near-adolescent — but already very hormonal — attraction to her. It is amazing how some early experiences are seared into your mind.
4 As a parent in the 21st century, this is another OMG! moment. The thought of one of my elementary school kids hanging out with a friend, unsupervised, shooting a firearm, sends shivers up my spine.
[...] or my friends or others around me, but seemingly out of the blue (although there were probably other factors at play). I literally went veg in a [...]