Old Friends

Friends are important. Can you imagine your life without friends?

Unfortunately, it's really easy in this day and age to forget about face to face contact, seeing friends, drinking, eating, laughing, crying, hugging and sharing with friends. It's easy to fall into the email-voice mail-blog-cell phone type of stay in touch we use a lot these days.

But friends are important.

And old friends are an under-appreciated natural resource. There's a history there. A short hand to communication. You say something and they understand immediately, because they've lived it with you before.

My family moved around a lot. So I was lacking in old friends. When I finally settled in Calgary as an adult, I made one good friend who is now an old friend. People accuse Carol and I of being like an old married couple - but it's because we now have that shorthand with each other. We know so much about each other's lives over the past 20 years that you don't have to waste a lot of time explaining things.

A few years ago I caught up with an old friend that I had first met in Junior High School. Now he really is my oldest friend - in the figurative sense, as he does point out that he is six months younger than I. But we have a great shorthand. I can say something like "a look like Mr. Nenzi used to give" and we're immediately on the same page. No long list of adjectives required to make any sort of picture appear in his mind - he's there with me. It's somehow reassuring. Plus it's fun to discuss our trip to France in 1976 rather than telling someone about it and knowing they're just listening politely!

Sometimes friends make us crazy. Sometimes friends become famous. Sometimes friends are famous already. (photo courtesy my mom, showing off her two most famous contacts - me the author and some famous actor guy...had a bit of a hit with a detective series called Columbo).

Like Dr. Seuss said "those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

The best part about friends is that they are there for you in the good times and the bad. And while it's nice to have them there in the bad times - it's even better to have them there in the good times. I mean what would success be without someone to share it with. I always joke that if I become successful, I will have to be REALLY successful, because I've got a big contingent to take with me. The entourage is already in place.

And what brings up this little bit of nostalgia? I had dinner tonight with two old friends, one of whom I haven't seen in probably 15 years. And it was really great to see him again. Just wait...you might be able to read about it in a book one day, because that's the other thing - everything is fodder for the books.

Remember to tell your friends you love them!