After I had known Bruce for about a year, our friendship came to an abrupt end. The beginning of the end began on Christmas, when I received a slot car racing set from my parents. It was a wonderful gift, and I spent many happy hours racing cars around the track, crashing them together and having a great time.
Unfortunately, this slot car set suffered from one major defect - it was too large and bulky to leave out for any length of time. So each time I wanted to play with it, I had to spend perhaps an hour or two putting the entire thing together. After a few months I tired of this, and the racing set stayed in the closet and gathered dust.
One day, I happened to mention this racing set to Bruce. He told me he’d been looking for one, and offered to purchase it from me. Since I hadn’t played with the thing in months, I thought it would be a great way to raise some money to fund some new additions to my armies.
Bruce agreed to pay me $20.00 in four installments of $5.00 each. He even wrote out a small contract and signed it for me to make it official. He paid the first $5.00, and I brought over the slot car set and gave it to him.
The next week I went over to his house to collect the second payment. He told me he wouldn’t pay now. He said I had forgotten to include a payment schedule in our contract (although we had orally agreed on a schedule) and chastised me for being so careless.
When I asked him why he was acting this way, he told me he was "doing it for my own good." He "wanted to teach me a lesson." Of course, the truth of the matter was that he didn’t have the money right then, and wanted an excuse to postpone payment.
I was very hurt, as I felt he wasn’t acting like a friend. Over the next few months, I went to his house every day, to see if he’d pay me what he owed me. Sometimes he gave me a small amount, and sometimes he gave me a lecture. Eventually he did pay me everything he owed me, but he made me work for it.
The net result of this behavior was that Bruce lost a friend. I never played wargames with him again after that. I felt betrayed, I felt that he wouldn’t have treated me that way if he was really a friend. I felt taken advantage of and I didn’t like being lied to by a friend.
So, after I received the last payment on the slot cars, I never talked to Bruce again. I completely lost contact with him, and I have no idea what happened to him after that.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.