My wife and I are now aged enough to have old friends as well as friends who are old. I'm not sure how I got to musing over this, but the topic has intruded upon my thoughts more than twice. Once it hit me so forcefully that I sat down and wrote a long boyhood story about the topic.
During the visitation at a funeral I preached, I overheard some conversations between old boyhood friends who had not seen one another in many years. Their fond recollection of old times reminded me of something I am sure most of us have experienced a time or two: growing up with friends, suffering a long separation, then having a glad reunion. Upon seeing a childhood buddy, it is as if that huge chasm of time collapses in a moment and you and your friend have never been apart. That is a special moment, an enriching experience, something everyone should have at least a few times in their life.
When I wrote "My Friend Poot" (published in this blog on 4/13/14), that is exactly what I had in mind. I tried to end the story in a way that showed the reader without telling the him that these two boys, though they had fist-fought in an elementary school bathroom, would now be friends forever. That is precisely how it is with Poot and me. He lives in Tennessee and we see one another very infrequently. But when we do, the span of time between our last meetings is no distance at all.
I suppose some people miss out on that. Military brats, as they are sometimes called, could fall into a group who move too often to continue those early friendships long enough to experience the "old friend phenomena." The children of pastors is another group who might move frequently enough to miss this blessing in life. When God called me into the ministry, I noticed a stress in our daughter although she never verbalized it, and to my discredit, neither did I. I did, however, sense that our children, especially our daughter, needed stability. Looking back I can now see how God built into me certain traits that caused and enabled me to stay in one small church for twenty-three years. I am proud of that record even though it eventually cost me my ministry (see "Transition" 9/14/2014).
Our daughter was the chief beneficiary of our ministerial endurance. I have no doubt that our son, Forrest, would have adjusted quickly and well to any move we may have made. But our daughter, Andrea, was different and God gave me the sense to see that. And today I am proud of the fact that Andrea is still friends with several people she grew up with but one in particular rivals anything I have experienced myself. Mary Katherine lived one street over from us, they attended the same school, and were buddies from the beginning. MK once went to Florida with us. I called her out rental child, and a few years back she was instrumental in my daughter getting a job. When MK was planning her wedding, Andrea suggested she get me to perform the ceremony.
"Do you think he will?" her friend anxiously asked.
"Mary Katherine," Andrea pleaded, "he's known you your whole life."
It was my honor.
Recently my wife received a friend request on Facebook from someone we used to run around with way back in the day when Penny and I were first married. The old friend was going to be in Greenwood for a short while. Could they get together? the message asked. They got together and had lunch before the old friend moved on to another state.
"It was like we were never apart," my wife blurted out after coming home from work the day she and Kay Kay had lunch. "It was amazing."
Yeah, I thought. I know something about that.
We were having dinner with John and Patsy, our old friends who are old. I call them old only because I can because neither of them will ever read this blog. I used to call John, "Sir" until he finally broke me of that with the offense he took at every instance of said respect. "I'm only fourteen years older than you," he scolded me more than once. Sorry. That's how Momma raised me.
I guess part of the problem there is I never viewed myself as an adult. I have been a late bloomer at everything. I graduated college at the age of thirty-five, ran my first marathon at the age of fifty, swam my first marathon at the age of fifty-one. Now only days away from my fifty-ninth birthday, I am just hitting my stride as a swimmer, about to take on my fourth Chicot Challenge.
In my mind I am still a youth. The difference between the boy that was and the boy that is lies only in the fact that I now have vastly more experience at playing games and those games have changed a bit. So have my chores. But I digress. The old saying, "The only difference between men and boys is the price of the toys," is certainly true with. My toys now are a carbon fiber bicycle, an expensive GPS watch, some high priced running shoes, and swim paddles. I have a nice collection of swim paddles. One exception, to the price of toys is goggles. Even though swimming is now my number one
This inner view of myself, this late-bloomer life I've led has caused me some conflicts along the way. Besides offending my old friend John, when I came on staff at MDCC, I was suddenly colleagues with people who only a few years before had been my teachers. For me this was weird in a major way. I didn't know how to act. One co-worker once told me, "If you call me that [Ma'am] one more time, we are going to have a problem." Sorry. It's Momma's fault. And can't you see, I'm just a boy, and I want to go outside and play.
So my wife and I now have old friends, and friends who are old, and friends who are old and old friends. Already we've lived long enough to have seen some of these friends remanded to the Mississippi Delta soil. A little over a year ago, I preached the funeral of one we grew up with, a good guy named Gary Minyard who was everybody's friend. There have been others also, gone too soon in an uncertain life that promises none of us another day. I can now see growing on the horizon like a building thunderstorm a time coming that if our hearts keep beating we will have only old friends and then no friends or only young friends. I saw this happen to my dad.
Roger Hodge had the most eclectic band of buddies one could ever imagine. On the one hand, he kept company with several millionaires. On the other hand, he ran with folks that his wife and children thought were a bit scandalous. Not that we judged the latter group for their lack of finances, but one went to prison and and least one more should have been locked up for crimes committed if not for mental issues he consistently displayed, and one proved himself to be a prolific and competent thief. And that is not all, but I will spare you. It was like he was drawn to the extremes, the poles, the best and the worst. Maybe he found the middle boring. Sometimes I do.
One group of his friends was his tennis playing partners. I remember as a very young child watching them play at Whittington Park. They played before I started first grade. They played while I was allegedly growing up. They played after I left home and got married. I used to tease Dad that one day he and his pals would have their tennis rackets duct-taped to their walkers. It almost happened that way. They grew old together then started dying. In their final years, they played on Bill Brown's court in Schlater, MS where Mrs. Brown would roll Bill out in a wheelchair so he could watch the action. Finally, one too many died, and they could no longer get up a game. An era ended.
Dad outlived most of his friends, but he still had a few. He had old friends and friends who were old at the CPA firm where he worked for over forty years. When he died, I called Bob Knight at the firm because I didn't want Bob to hear about Dad's passing secondhand; I thought he deserved better than that. And I wanted him to tell the other folks there, folks like David Lott who was Dad's fishing partner for several decades. Dad always said David Lott was the best fishing scout he ever knew. David could go to a new lake or new part of the marsh or gulf in Louisiana and learn how to fish the new territory faster than anyone he had ever seen. That's what Dad said, and Dad was usually right.
After he left us, his children were going through drawers at the house. I noticed a small bulletin board in the den above a desk we were cleaning out. Pinned to the board was a note, a list, of people Dad had met and friends he had made at the gym he worked out at in his final years, Advanced Rehab. On the list was a name I had begun to hear from Dad's lips. A new friend who was old. He was there when Dad died.
There's nothing like old friends. If you have one or two or more of them, place a phone call, say a pray, cherish memories. Get together and do something.
You'll miss them when they're gone.
Or they will miss you.
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