Chip

There is one story (Ned) that I'm probably going to skip, because the whole situation is still so in flux that I don't really think it's even close to over. Suffice it to say that Ned cheated on his girlfriend, a close friend of mine, and he is at this point trying to get his life back on track. Whether or not Ned and I will be able to be friends in the future is unsure. 

So I'm going to talk about Chip. 

This ... This might just be the worst of them all. 

Certainly the most dramatic. 

And the most fresh. 

I met Chip at an internship nearing three years ago. He was a staff member at the nonprofit I was interning at for school. I held the internship for two semesters and then I volunteered there another semester until I graduated. So I saw Chip at least twice a week at work for about a year and a half. I really enjoyed working there. It was a lot of fun. The best part was how close I got with some of my coworkers. We would spend a lot of time joking around with each other and being sarcastic. There came a point when I actually looked forward to the week more than I did to the weekend. It was insane. 

Chip was one of the coworkers I got close with. He and one other guy (and I) were definitely the three that spent the most time joking around together. The great thing was that we were working with kids, and it was an extremely fun environment the whole time, so the joking around lasted pretty much the entire time we were at work. 

But we could be serious too. Some of the kids we worked with were in pretty bad spots. We discussed these things, and how best we could serve them, and how difficult it was. And then we would move past it and start joking again. We were each others' support system for the difficult parts of the job. 

At the end of my first semester working there, I took a three hour trip with three coworkers to see a baseball game. And a three hour trip back. This is the first half of how Chip and I became friends outside of work. 

Obviously, there was a lot of time for chatting with six hours in the car. We did some more joking around. We also talked about serious things. Chip mentioned how he tends to have bad days on Fridays because of an associated memory. I remembered this, and I sent him a note of encouragement on Friday. And he responded, thanking me profusely and encouraging me in turn. 

The second half of how Chip and I became friends was when I invited all of my work friends over to watch a baseball game on my last day in the state before summer break. Chip was the only one who showed up, except for my sister who had come to drive home with me. 

Chip ended up joining my sister and some other friends and I for dinner. He told me that he thought my friends were awesome, and that I should make sure to keep him updated on my surely-to-be-adventurous summer.