Influence

Influence? The fact that I could sit down and write a list of how these people influenced me suggests that the influence did not change me in any deep way. These people are all my elders, and maybe I feel distanced from them. The person whose influence shook me to the deepest level is a person whose influence is nearly impossible to describe. Christen Leah Biddle, the best friend I’ve ever had, changed me, and I changed her at one of the most crucial times in our lives: the eighth grade. We developed our personalities, our senses of humor, and our love for movies at the same time and in the same way. It would devalue her influence to tell it; I am what I am because of her, I cannot say that about anybody else.
Christen came to my school in the eighth grade, and we immediately clicked. Before she came, I didn’t feel like an outsider, as I had my friends that I had known since first grade. However, until Christen, I never had anyone my age to categorize with from top to bottom. She made me feel sure in who I was. At this awkward stage in our lives, we found unsuspecting admiration in each other. We both were crazed by movies and had a similar sense of humor. We had the same problems and the same thoughts. That was all it took.
Halfway through that same year, Christen and I became inseparable. Our yearbook even had a section that lists the names of students and what they were never seen without. Under Christen, it read: “Kadrick,” and under Kadrick: “Christen.” I became a staple at her house and she at mine. We no longer had to ask our parents if it was ok to have a sleepover on weekends, they assumed we would. On weekdays, we usually walked over to her house, which was near school, and hung out there till I had to go home. Our favorite past time on those long afternoons after school was to walk to the nearby Wal-Mart and get a bag of chips and two 24 oz. Sprites. Watching a movie, we would sit on her couch with our chips and Sprite and talk about our dreams of...