I came across some letters from my first best friend, Pete, and got a laugh out of rereading them.\u00a0 These are letters Pete wrote after his family moved on from Shelbyville.\u00a0 Pete and his family first moved to Shelbyville when I was in third grade.\u00a0 His father was the new pastor at our church. I took an instant disliking to\u00a0Pete when my parents dragged my brothers and me to the church basement for the welcome luncheon.\u00a0 He was skinny and his ears stuck out.\u00a0 And there was my Mom nudging me forward, saying, “Oh look – they have a boy your age. Why don’t you go introduce yourself?”\u00a0 “Because he’s skinny and his ears stick out” is what I wanted to say.\u00a0 But I did\u00a0introduce myself … and we became the greatest of friends.\u00a0 Pete made church fun for me.\u00a0 And he was the first person to show me that real Christians would stand out in a crowd … and it wasn’t something to be feared. When 7th grade\u00a0rolled around, I was excited – even in the midst of fears of going to a new building –\u00a0because it meant that Pete and I would finally get to go to the same school.\u00a0 I remember the relief I felt when I realized we would have the same lunch period.\u00a0 And the junior high cafeteria was the place where Pete taught me how a young Christian acts on his faith.\u00a0 The cafeteria was segregated – the “normal” kids jockeyed for positions at the majority of the tables but there were two tables that were reserved for the special ed kids.\u00a0 None of the “normal” kids ever EVER considered sitting with the special ed kids.\u00a0 Except Peter.\u00a0 I, of course, tagged along, but it was Pete who initiated sitting THERE.\u00a0 And not only sitting there, but actually talking to THEM.\u00a0 Like they were human beings.\u00a0 The way Jesus would have done if He had been a junior high student. I learned a lot from Pete.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he moved away at the end of that 7th grade year, but we wrote letters and visited whenever he could talk our parents into making the drive.\u00a0 I’m still in contact with him through Facebook but not enough.\u00a0 After reading these old letters I realize I need to spend some time with Pete sometime soon.\u00a0 Because I can’t keep all these old letters, I thought I’d put them in the mail to him.\u00a0 I figure he’ll get a big kick out of reading what he wrote to me.\u00a0 There’s absolutely nothing serious in any of the letters; they’re filled with sentences like the following: “Do you play with brissle bears, grrrr.”\u00a0 “Do you still like poneytail head?”\u00a0 (That was about Amber – my first crush.)\u00a0 “If this letter seems a little strange, it should, I wrote it!!!” 3-26-82\u00a0 – a reddish stain that he drew a line around and called “Ketchup Man” “James and Berta (Pete’s sister, Rebekah) are still romancing.\u00a0 He comes over and eats all our food.” (They eventually got married!) And my favorite (although I have no idea what it means):\u00a0 “Have mercy on me, Buddy Bear!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I came across some letters from my first best friend, Pete, and got a laugh out of rereading them.\u00a0 These are letters Pete wrote after his family moved on from Shelbyville.\u00a0 Pete and his family first moved to Shelbyville when I was in third grade.\u00a0 His father was the new pastor at our church. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2559,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/2559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}