It had been years since I had last kept in touch with Stephen, and I wish now that it had stayed that way.
Stephen and I first met in Primary School. Even at nine years old each, we were often teased and bullied because we weren't like the other children. We had no interest in sport and listened to rock and metal music. We played musical instruments and video games, not football or hockey. We were shy around people and all we really had were each other. We were seen as outcasts at such an early age.
Yet, this didn't bother us. To this day, it still doesn't really. Yeah ok, sometimes I detested the teasing and ridiculing, but I had a happy childhood. My parents treated me well and I was never sick. The strange fact about me is I have never broken a bone. Nor have I had a serious illness. Never even had the flu. I've had the odd head cold and stomach bug, but nothing too serious.
My sister was two years older than me (two years and a month to be exact). She dressed and acted what most people would have described as "a tomboy". She always looked out for me, stood up for me; hell, even beat people up for me. As I got older I got better at standing up for myself. What I lacked in body strength I made up for in intelligence (not to sound cocky or anything).
People who would insult I would just either ignore or tell them what I thought of them. I used big words that nobody could really comprehend at the age of 14. They would just splurt out something unoriginal and stupid like "yeah, well, you're gay" and what not. Brilliant!
As I got older, I began to get accepted again. Stephen was always accepted by people in Secondary (High) School, but for me it seemed to take a while. Around the age of 16 if I re-call. I guess people just mature.
However, it was around this time that Stephen started acting strangely.
It was nothing too major. Hell, back then I didn't even see it as a problem. He started growing a huge interest in Psychology. The study of the human brain of course. He would often go and played tricks and mind games on people, asking people questions and "testing" them. I remember one day I was queuing at the vending machine for my daily Mars bar (Yummy) and he came over and asked me "Would you be willing to skip to the front of the queue right now if you knew there was only one Mars bar left?
My answer instantly was "No, of course not". People in my school often did skip the queue, but I never really did. I guess I'm just not that type of person. It didn't really bug me. His reply is what got to me though. "Ah but you see, your subconscious is telling you that the people in front of you are younger than you. They're inferior to you. You could easily knock them all out of your way and they will be helpless to stop you. However, society sees this act as uncivilized, cruel, unsophisticated if you wish."
This response had startled me a little, but I brushed it off. (Probably should've told someone looking back). The time for College came around and, surprise surprise, Stephen did a course in Psychology. I wanted to go to the same university as him to do studies in Human Resource Management, but I didn't get the requirements so I ended up going to another college instead. We often kept in touch every weekend. He was still the same ol' Ste (nickname), a great laugh, a nice guy, big heart. Very sincere and brutally honest at times, but that was what I loved about him.
His love of Psychology continued to grow and grow and grow. Often he would openly talk about the experiments of Freud, Adler and other famous Psychologists.
Sometimes he would talk about their experiments when we were with our group of friends. Some of them were disturbing, such as "The Prison Experiment". Others were brutal, like an experiment carried out after a Jewish boy's penis had been accidently burned off in a circumcision, where they tried to convince him from an early age that he, was in fact, a she. The result? All family members, including "her" had turned to some sort of substance abuse and/or killed themselves. Damn.
