Friend Rich

Friend rich is a term I use a lot these days. Having friends has never felt better than it does at this stage of the journey. I recently reconnected with a very dear old friend after far too many years of being completely out of touch with him. The return of this particular friend is the high point of this year that is now nearly over with. It's funny, a bit ironic that when my parents divorced all those years ago and my mother moved my sisters and I to another town & school system, my friend suggested some kind of CB radio that would enable us to talk endlessly, like teenagers did on the phone in those days.

No one had cell phones in those days - I guess CB radios were the precursors to cellular phones and not everyone had those. I never got one and eventually I fell out of touch with one of the best friends I've ever had. We stayed in touch a bit after the move, but things just seemed to have a different course for us both. The last time I saw my old friend - until last week that is, was in 1980 on a Kent State bus. Ten minutes or so of gab about nothing much at all - the band I was in at the time, that's about all I can remember talking about all those years ago. Some years later I worked in a drum shop and my old friend's cousin came in now & then to buy sticks. I remember asking about my friend, Joe, and his cousin said he thought he'd moved to Florida - though he didn't stay in touch w/him and wasn't really sure.

Somehow that made me give up hope of getting in touch with Joe again, and that was sad. Early this summer I did a google search and found him on Face Book. When I saw his hometown, I knew that was him - it's sometimes tough to tell much from the tiny thumbnail pictures that are on Face Book when you reach middle age. I suppose I wondered if Joe had forgotten me - I should've known better really, but when you get to be middle aged, memory isn't quite as clear as it used to be. It's all a matter of degrees though.

Now is where the irony of Joe's suggestion of a CB radio all those years ago comes in. Through Face Book two old friends can reconnect. I can see pictures that fill in some of the space of a hole that spanned more years than I would've liked. In a matter of split seconds, I can get an IM or a text from Joe for no reason at all other than a good morning or a laugh. There were always serious laughs when Joe and I hung out - always. We pursued all things funny like it was our job - and maybe it was. All these years later, it's a complete joy to know that we still laugh like the 13 year old boys we were several lifetimes ago.

Through Skype, I can video chat with Joe - which is much better than a CB radio and I'm happy to say that the laughs flow every time I talk with Joe, we always laugh about something. We always did laugh about things. I'm glad, blessed actually, that I reconnected with my dear old friend while we're still young enough to remember all the things we laughed about when we were kids. Neither one of us are close to the boys we were when we first became friends, but we still laugh as though we were.

Last week I got to hang out with Joe a bit when he was in town for his niece's wedding. The youngest of 9, Joe had a week to see all kinds of family and friends and when you're only home for that short of time, if you have 4 people that you want and need to see, time runs out pretty quickly. So I was glad to get any hang time with my old friend at all. So much has happened in the far too many years since we were hanging out or talking regularly. Not all of it is good, certainly not all of it is bad and I like the feeling of the best being yet to come - even if I don't really know what that best may be.

We got together for lunch and waited over an hour for hamburgers - albeit good hamburgers, but really, does a hamburger need to take an hour? I'm kind of glad they did take so long actually, because my old friend and I never had the pleasure of having a beer together - at least not that I can recall. So there were lots of laughs while we waited for lunch to arrive. After lunch we decided to go uptown...or is it downtown - and have a drink at a bar. The bar had a really bad beer selection, so I suggested a couple of Rolling Rocks - which was a horrible call, and it was mine.

We drank Newcastle Brown Ale at lunch - which went down pretty easy. Rolling Rocks, on the other hand, were sheer torture with every sip. It felt like I was a kid again and I just hated every sip of beer I took, but kept doing it anyway. I don't know where or how I heard Rolling Rock referred to as "green death", but that's exactly what it seemed like every sip of the 12 ounces I had in front of me. I've had green death before, though not for a long, long time. Joe hated every drink just as I did. Somehow the fact that this bar had Labatt's blue escaped me - because I would've picked that. At one point I jokingly suggested that whiskey would go down easier than the beer we were drinking.


"Give us two shots of Seagram's V.O.!", Joe said after I suggested anything, even whiskey, would taste better than the beers we seemed to be suffering through. I generally stay as far away from whiskey as I can, and I had to work in a couple of hours, so I just couldn't cave on this. As it is, I'd pushed the envelope a bit further than I should have. It wasn't easy to part company with Joe and head into work - I wondered if I'd get to hang with him again before he went back to California. As it turns out, I got to spend all of Tuesday afternoon and most of the evening with Joe. I can't even put into words how much it means to me to have this guy back in my life as a friend after so many years. There may be 3,000 plus miles between us, but the connection is still as strong as it ever was.

This is but one example of how friend rich I am - and make no mistake about it, this one means a lot. The older I get, the more the bonds of longstanding friendships strengthen. How is it that I'm so blessed to pick up friendships that have existed at various points in my life and feel such a true appreciation for how someone has touched my life and I theirs? Seems like divine intervention to me.
I feel so fortunate to have all of the longstanding friendships that I now cherish in my life. Staying in touch and communicating has never been easier and being easier just plays into the fact that I've never forgotten so many wonderful people in my life. The older any of us get, the less it seems that we actually get to spend physical time with people who have come into our lives and then gone out of them - but you don't forget, you mustn't forget - not a single soul who has meant something to you in your life. For me, it's the ones that still remain standing and the fact that they continue to do so having survived pain, sorrow and heartbreaking life events that have only served to highlight the better things that someone can enhance in this journey we're all on. While I'll take live and in person any day of the week over an email, IM, text or a phone call, it's an absolute joy to have someone from my past that I shared days with contact me and let me know that they haven't forgotten me. That my friends is what I call friend rich! By the way, Rolling Rock will never flow down my gullet again and Joe said the same thing!