Many curry favor with a ruler, and everyone is the friend of a man who gives gifts (Proverbs 19:6).

When John Westin moved into town and joined my second-grade classroom, he didn't really fit in right away.  He dressed in funny clothes and spoke with a funny accent -- like some East Coast snob.  He prided himself on the fact that he didn't know how to play football, even though this was something of a lingua franca among the boys in our class.  And he had a prickly personality:  bossy, opinionated, self-centered, and inconsiderate of others.  To say the least, he didn't start out by winning a lot of friends at Winskill Elementary School.

But later that year, John's father opened up the newest, coolest restaurant in our 4,000 person town:  Happy Joe's Pizzeria.  It had arcade video games like Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man, and a fully-stocked candy store with swirly lolly-pops, bubble-gum cigars, and candy sticks that tasted like root beer.  They made the pizzas to order right behind a glass viewing area -- so you could see them rolling out the dough, piling on the toppings, and sliding it into the oven.  And for dessert, they had a selection of 20 different flavors of ice cream, including my favorite:  tutti frutti.  It was the most amazing thing ever to happen to our town, as far back as I could remember.  And as luck would have it, Happy Joe's Pizzeria was basically the personal playground of one of the kids in our second-grade class.  You can probably imagine:  John Westin suddenly went from being the weird and obnoxious "new kid" to being one of the more popular boys in the class.  If you got close with John Westin, then that meant that you automatically got close with Mr. Westin -- "Happy Joe" himself.  Thus, every time you'd go to Happy Joe's for ice cream, you'd get an extra-generous scoop.  Every time you played Centipede with John, you got limitless rounds of action without ever having to put in a quarter.  It was pretty sweet.

When John's birthday came around and it was announced that it was going to be an extravagant pizza party at Happy Joe's, everyone in the class went crazy.  It was easily the most anticipated event of the whole second-grade calendar year.  We played video games until our thumbs were sore.  We ate pizza and ice cream and candy until our bellies ached.  We celebrated John's birthday in style.  For that day, John Westin was the coolest and most popular kid at Winskill Elementary School.

But by the time third grade rolled around, John's parents were getting divorced.  Happy Joe's was still open for business, but John's dad wasn't very happy any more.  His demeanor was noticeably detached.  His ice cream scoops were standard issue for everyone.  And suddenly, we all noticed that John was back to being a snobby, selfish, East Coast kid.  In all honesty, he had never changed -- even during the peak of his popularity -- but we had all become blinded to it because of the glitz and glamor of Happy Joe's.  I can't say that I'm proud of the way that I treated John through the course of that meteoric year, but it illustrated a valuable point that I remember my Dad saying to me once:  "You live by the sword, you die by the sword."  Friends, it turns out, can be bought.  But if the benefits are cut, then the relationships die out, too.  It's not a happy truth.  But it's a truth that I learned at Happy Joe's.