A Story Of An Enduring Friendship,

I have had the good fortune to actually make friends with a relatively small group of people over the years and what makes these friendships so special is that they have all endured the test of time. The idea that I would have even one friend let alone eight or ten is amazing in itself, but it's the truth. My wife and I just finished spending several days with two of these friends while I was recuperating from a small surgery that is related to a small infection I have written about before, that I contracted while traveling on business in an Asian country whose name I won't mention but will give several hints, so here goes, see if you can guess. Holding a large international athletic competition, bad human rights record, their food tastes great but is usually loaded with MSG and makes women retain water and their rings don't fit, paint children's toys with lead paint, produced coats with collars made of dog fur (Lassie, Lassie where are you?) and last but not least, they, well you should have gotten it by now.

The main reason I am writing about these two friends is that we have not seen them for over twenty years and I thought it would be interesting to start at the beginning of something that started over twenty five years ago, this has no bearing on other friends we have as we feel we have applied the same principles to those friendships and are quite confident the results would be the same. Since friendships usually start out with certain personality traits appealing to one and other and relationships developing from there, a rather complex social and biological phenomenon that takes place almost exclusively between humans and sometimes Canadian Geese.

And since I am calling this a story I thought I would give my two friends fictitious names. So, my wife and I met Irwin & Rowena twenty five plus years ago at a meeting of a fraternal organization the has nothing to do with horned mammals or birds of prey and membership is not determined by one's pedigree but usually how badly one behaved and their desire to be and stay, a member in good standing of said organization. OK, I'll give a small hint, the second word in the fraternal organization's name rhymes with Eponymous, I am unaware of the definition, it just rhymes. Anyway things worked like this. We all met at a meeting one night and for some strange reason we all hit it off from the start, not that we had so much in common or that our backgrounds were the same, in fact we were all quite different. Irwin worked in a large factory and appeared at first glance to be as blue collar as they came, a union man through and through and let you know it. Next was Rowena, a legal secretary for a very high powered PI attorney and as in your face as her husband to be. There was my wife , a usually quiet girl, but with definite ideas of how she wanted to navigate the world and at the time my partner in a small business Then there was me, a kind soft spoken, a never insult anyone kind of guy, OK so that's a small lie, I'm essentially a fairly base person in most aspects of my life that has been working on a clean language program for as long as I can remember. Besides that we were all influenced by the different socioeconomic areas we hailed from, as in urban, suburban and country, so enough for the demographics, I'm only trying to setup this story and show that making friends is a randomly occurring event that I am not even remotely qualified to expound on, if you have a good friend who is a brilliant biologist/anthropologist and has studied human behavior as well as other higher mammals for his or her entire work life, have them tell you their theories on the subject. I only know I am the fortunate recipient of whatever this phenomenon is and as far as I'm concerned, that's good enough.

I would talk to Irwin from time to time about the intricacies of how one kept his good standing in the fraternal organization mentioned above. He would respond to those comments and I for my part would would blow my top, you see Irwin is something of a contrarian (Rowena gave that term and it's perfect)and that means he will take the opposite view of any topic just to get the best of whoever he is dealing with, and he does so more often than not. Sometimes this was annoying and others I would just let it roll off my back, maybe, sometimes, not very often. Anyway, we all lived in a large mid western city that has a long shoreline on a lake that begins with the letter "M". We would get together at least once a week for meetings at the said fraternal organization and would go out socially on a regular basis. We became such good friends that we asked Rowena to be our son Rollo's Godmother when he was baptised, she accepted, it was a good deal. There is an old saying that states "all good things must come to an end" and it's mostly true except the friendship part. You see we moved to the suburbs, our business grew and took more of our time as well as the time with our two kid's, Rochelle & Rollo. We were able to keep active in the fraternal organization in the new town we moved to as there were plenty of meeting places since an awful lot of people who had behaved badly and not only qualified for membership but actively sought it out, but sadly it was difficult to get into the big city because of distance, family and business. Then we had some minor business problems and moved to California, me to work as a hatchet man for a company and my wife Gladys to stay at home with our young children, we then basically dropped off the face of the earth. During that time Rowena was in an accident and Irwin's company decided to preempt, by several years, screwing labor and closed the factory Irwin worked for. Irwin took the opportunity to go to college and graduated. To make a long story short, Rowena decided she was going back to school herself and earned a PHD in Medieval Studies (I think that's what it is and if not I can guarantee she will call, email and possibly mail to correct me at which time I will go immediately to the web and edit this blog and attach an apology). During the time Rowena was working on her PHD she and Irwin had the opportunity to travel throughout the United States and Europe, in that time we had only sporadic contact. In the last couple of years we would occasionally talk and Irwin and Rowena would invite Gladys and myself to visit at their new home on a mountaintop in the southern part of a western state that has a baseball team that rhymes with cockies.

So, one opportunity came and went when Gladys and I toured the state on our motorcycle a couple of years ago since we were unable to cancel hotel reservations from an online service and also, time constraints. This time, no reservations we couldn't cancel because we booked direct and no time issues to deal with so after the small surgery was over Gladys and I headed south from the town in the state that is the home of the baseball team that rhymes with cockies. Irwin met us at the gate as we needed to be passed in and would have gotten lost as they live is a vast nature sanctuary. It was over twenty years since we had seen Irwin, but since I had been aging so gracefully over that time I had an idea what he would look like, I was close, he looked like the late great Congressman from the state of Illinois, Henry Hyde, with two small hitches, his sense of timing and ability to take opposing views hadn't dulled with time and unlike Henry Hyde, Irwin is very much alive. When we finally pulled up to the house we hurried in to see the other half of our host's for the weekend. Rowena looked as I thought she would, nature had been kind to her, not that nature had some dislike for Irwin, his wife as does mine seems to be holding up better than we are.

Anyway, to make a long story shorter, since I have been working on this for over a week, this is what happened. I spent time with Irwin, more than I ever have in the years we have known each other and in the end was saddened to leave my old friend and move on. I wished I had had the opportunity to spend this kind of time with him years earlier. As for Rowena, well, she's as wonderful today as she was when we last saw her, we were equally saddened when we left. I guess there is some lesson here somewhere and maybe this is one. Try to make some friends in your life and if you are lucky enough to do so, follow the advice from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure "Be excellent to your friends" real friends are not easy to come by so value those relationships.