Do you remember that baddest boy?

At the beginning of the story, Bacho writes that " When I was growing up in Seattle, Rico Divina was the baddest Filipino I ever knew, and I knew them all. Vietnam killed him. Not there, but it killed him nevertheless."(p20) How should we understand the word "baddest" here? Is it a positive or a negative word here? I think "baddest" here refers to the fact that Rico always fight with the neighborhood boys and has a lot of affairs with the white girls. Nevertheless, for Buddy, the narrator, I feel it's a positive word which shows his admire to Rico, even though he is "bad" and died at Vietnam. Rico is brave, who owns the courage that Buddy does not have.

Rico and Buddy are good friends, but they are so different. With Buddy's description, we can know what kind of people Rico is. Rico is a typical rebellious teenage boy, or we can say he is more than typical, who is the baddest. He is good at dancing. He can fight against a boy, without thinking about the result. He can get the white blonde long-legged girls. He doesn't care about his future, because he thinks he has no future. On the other hand, Buddy is also Filipino, but he does not act like Rico. In the article, there are not a lot of description about Rico. We know that he wants to go to college, marry a girl and give birth to a child. That's all his life. We can imagine what kind of teenager he is and we can imagine what kind of adult he will become. In the other words, I will say that Buddy is someone who are looking for a peaceful life, like most people. But Rico is not that kind of person. He doesn't care about his future and what kind of person he will be. What he care about is what he is doing now and who he is now. He is someone always on his way to find himself. Find himself everywhere and nowhere. So he chose to go to Vietnam. He choose to fight. Actually, he doesn't really care about that war. As the author writes "For us, Vietnam had no moral ambiguities; the government called, and we went. Simple as that"(P23) Rico goes to the war, not for the country, but for himself. He wants to fight. He wants to leave and go somewhere else, because he thinks that's the only way for him to feel he is alive. I guess most of the people who actively participate the Vietnam war are like Rico. They don't really know what the war means and what it will lead to. They don't know the purpose. They are not politicians, but people just like Vietnam people, who are innocent, nevertheless whose innocence causes the others' suffering. I always hear that there is no winner in a war, both sides are sufferers. People are always the ones who are crying.

Buddy wants to stop Rico. I don't think the reason is because he thinks the war is bad. I feel he just feels that's dangerous, which may make him lose his best friend. But in the real life, no one can stop the step of another, no matter how imitate they are. Rico and Buddy are different, which decides they will choose  the different way. Rico also reminds me of that kind of baddest boy and girl when I was in high school. They don't like to study. They always want to make some affairs. They do the stuff other students don't dare to do. They dissipate their youth just like they will die tomorrow. They are too brave, so their rays of light disappear fast. I don't know what I feel about them, pity? or jealousy? Whatever the answer is, I know I will not forget them. Do you still remember that baddest boy?