Old Friends

-I am lucky enough, believe it or not, to have a lot of friends. Most are probably really husbands of my wife's friends, but then we are all in the same position, clinging to each other like passengers in a lifeboat, as our wives tug around life and events happy in each other's company as directed by their lives and those of our children. That said, I actually have a few friends of my own. They are guys upon whom I am not co-dependant for some passable conversation or companionship focused on football, ice hockey or beer, while the girls sort out the real issues of life, like parenting and china patterns. These are the friends I have actually made through effort over years and limited social skills while making attempts at growth and maturity.


-I have a friend, who has been my friend, since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. We grew up together in a small Connecticut town and we raised our parents together for years, as we "trialed and errored" a lot of their approach to raising their eldest children (which we both were). He and I have a litany of nearly fatal mis-steps during our adolescence - some of which made us stronger and some of which sent us cowering under our beds, even to this day, for fear of what the outcomes could have been. We survived and we moved away from home still in contact and continued to perpetuate some of our stupidities - even as adults (ask the staff at the La Perla Cantina on the Fulham Road in London). All in all, though, we never did anything that moved the dial beyond the usual actions of "stupid teens", and we managed to come out the back end, intact, and still best of friends.

-I do not see this friend terribly often. He lives in the "land of fruit and nuts" and I live on the east coast in reality. He is a "real" writer and has published a truly interesting volume of non-fiction (as opposed to my mostly daily musings at verbal diaharea). He is godfather to one of my sons. He and I manage to get together maybe once every other year given different geography and different lifestyles.

-When we do get together, it is like the clock has momentarily jogged right back to the last time we were together. The tapestry of our friendship is never ending. The threads while stretched, remain constant. He will always be the guy with whom I used to steal booze at his parent's house, replacing it with water (not that everyone has not done this) and calling it "demo juice". He is the guy I chased a girl halfway across New York with after one of those glitzy holiday black tie gigs (we never got the girl but we did get in plenty of trouble). He is the guy who hitchhiked from Stapleton Airport to the foothills of Denver to make my wedding.

-In life I have a few of these friends, as we all are lucky enough to have. I do not discount those bobbing ice cube's who have become my friends but became them as a result of our drift alongside our wives' social calendars, as some of these have become close members of my team (and I of theirs). But there are a few guys, the thought of whom and things we have done together, that always make me smile a little more wryly, and wistfully, and thankfully.