Kayzen Hunter, an 8-year-old boy from Little Rock, Arkansas, is a testimony to the ancient proverb that a friend in need is a friend indeed. Interestingly, for Kayzen, this friend was not one of his schoolhouse classmates or a neighborhood sports buddy, but a waiter who served meals to his family on their routine visits to a local restaurant named Waffle House. The waiter’s name is Devonte Gardner. As time went by and he remained their recurring waiter at the restaurant, their bond grew into much more than that of a server-customer relationship. For young Kayzen, Devonte became not only one of his favorite waiters but also a nice friend.
“It was about a year ago when they met. My dad started going and Kayzen would go with him. When he came home, he talked about Devonte and how much he liked him,” Kayzen’s mom Vittoria Hunter, who is a real estate agent and broker at Century 21 Parker & Scroggins Realty, told TODAY.com. She said that their family used to visit this restaurant almost every weekend. There, they have been placing their orders with Devonte for about a year. Over time, they became so friendly that Kayzen nowadays gets a high-five from Gardner when they walk inside the restaurant door.
“Devonte always treats everyone with kindness and he always knows exactly what I want: hash browns with cheese and eggs with cheese,” said Kayzen, according to The Washington Post. Also, his 35-year-old mother Vittoria said, talking about Devonte, “He’s the nicest person ever.” During one such time, Kayzen was visiting the Waffle House with his grandfather, John Donofrio. That day, Kayzen learned some details about Devonte’s life. In reality, Devonte was living on a shoestring. He was living in a motel with his wife and children. Upon returning home, Kayzen insisted to her mom to initiate a GoFundMe page to raise money to support his friend Devonte.
Describing Devonte’s life conditions, Kayzen said, “Devonte is a hard-working dad with two little girls and a wife. He is a dedicated worker and has to walk or get a ride to get to work every day. He was looking for a decent-priced car, and his family was unfortunate and ended up in an apartment riddled with black mold. He had to get his kids out and it set him back a lot. We are now helping him get into a clean rental property and want to help him even more by raising funds so he has a reliable vehicle to drive his family and get to and from work,” according to his GoFundMe page, which was started by Vittoria soon enough after Kayzen insisting her to do so. The page was titled, “Help Devonte get a family car.” Adding to it, Kayzen writes on the GoFundMe page, “Devonte is one of the most joyous and positive people you’ve ever met!! He always greets us with the biggest smile. I hope your heart is as BIG as mine and you will help me spread kindness in the world. Any amount helps!” They have raised $120,815, as of February 2024.
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | andresr
Following this support, Devonte told TODAY.com that he just signed a lease on a two-bedroom apartment thanks to the efforts of his little friend. “I will be moving into my apartment very soon. We’re able to have something more stable.” He also reported that he’s looking to get a family sedan or minivan but will save the rest of the money for his kids. “I’m gonna save the rest because I want to put my daughters in a good school, I want them to be in a good environment. Everything I’m getting is going mostly towards my daughters to make sure they have a great, great life. Make sure we won’t have to struggle anymore.” The Hunters family still visit their favorite Waffle House, order their favorite meals, and chat with their newfound friend Devonte. An everlasting bond to cherish, especially after Kayzen extended the warmhearted gesture of friendship!
This article originally appeared 8 months ago.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.