Friends can influence your interests. Sure, sometimes peer pressure makes you do stupid, inane things that otherwise would never have crossed your mind; it's your real friends that influence you to do constructive things though. My best friend growing up helped get me into one of my favorite hobbies, and that is rebuilding cars.

 

 

His name was Kevin Mitchell, and every day I would hang out with him at his house. Every day, his dad would come home from work and head into the garage, with us following shortly afterwards. During the times hanging out there, I watched and helped with a frame-up rebuild of a 1955 Chevy Bel Air, a restoration of a 1969 Chevy Camaro RS, and a modification of a 1970 Chevy Nova. They spent a lot of time explaining how to do all the various tasks, helping build my foundation and love for customizing and rebuilding cars. Sure, my father had his share of muscle cars, and he knew how to maintain them, but he didn't get into the custom aspect of things. Shortly after my best friend moved out of state (right after smoking the tires on his custom '67 Camaro with a ported/polished 454 and Weiand 6-71 poking out of the cut hood literally around the block), I met another friend that had a 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang that wanted some help fixing it up. I spent the better part of 4 months, and we got that car in excellent looking and running order. We cruised in that car until I bought my 1991 Camaro IROC, followed shortly after by purchasing a 1989 Camaro IROC and a 1979 Camaro. I spent the better part of a year working on all 3 cars, modifying interior and exterior, doing engine work, and even modifying the 1979 Camaro into a car that could pull 10.89-11.03 in the quarter mile and managed to get me pulled over for excessive noise on way more than a single occasion.

 

 

Yes, friends can make you do stupid things. Peer pressure can be quite an influence. I'm still thankful to this day that I had friends that helped me get into rebuilding cars. Over the last 12 years, I've had dozens of cars, and worked on hundreds, and I wonder what  would have come to be if my best friend growing up and his dad didn't spend their time teaching me how to rebuild and modify cars. It's still one of my favorite hobbies, and I wouldn't trade that for the world... well, maybe if I could have my 1979 Camaro back.

 

 

This rave written by Joe Rosendorf Jr.  This is merely an opinion based on personal experiences, and is intended to inform based on those experiences.