Old Friends

And why they are the best friends of all

Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash

By the end of second grade, it was an even bet that I was headed down the road to delinquency. For starters, I was caught with a knife on the playground (actually, a popsicle stick sharpened to a point on the sidewalk, which I had brought for show and tell). My second grade teacher (who will be played in the movie version by Margaret Hamilton) sentenced me to many hours in the dreaded “green chair” at the front of the classroom, my punishment for talking too much and for primitive attempts at humor that landed badly. Suffice to say that I was confused. I was a lost boy, friendless,  with no sense of my place in that baffling environment called school.  

But in the third grade, a miracle occurred. A few weeks into the fall term, my teacher placed me in a reading group with two others and quietly informed us that we were her “advanced readers.” One of the others was Bill, who became my best friend that year.

Bill was the smartest person I had ever met. He knew all sorts of things about the world – politics, history, current events, and more – and more significant, we liked the same comics. When I tried to impress him with my own worldliness, such as what I knew about a philosopher I called “S0-crates,” he gently informed me of the correct, three-syllable pronunciation. I learned from him. He learned from me. We bonded.

Renewing a Bond

Thanks to Bill and my astute teacher, I never again doubted my place in the school cosmos. I was one of the smart kids. Sometimes too smart, but that’s another story. Bill and I hung out together through third and fourth grades, a friendship that ended only when his family moved to another city.

Early this month, Bill and I renewed that friendship. We met up again after 63 years, along with our wives, at his North Carolina home. The vibe was exactly the same. In his presence I felt the warmth, the bond, the same sense of shared companionship.

Do you have friends that you don’t see regularly, but when you do it’s as though you are picking up  precisely where you left off, without warmups or preamble, because you know each other that well? That’s my notion of a deep friendship, one that goes beyond the superficial niceties of what’s new or how have you been.

Bill was not the only friend from antiquity that I connected with on my recent vacation, in which we drove to nine cities in 12 days. It was also a treat to see Elsa, who suffered with me through eight years of religious school and then went to the same university. It was great to catch up with Patti, my high school debate partner, whom I hadn’t seen 1969.

There are friends, and then there are old friends. (I’m also looking at you, John and Ronaldo.) It’s an important distinction. My former work colleague Wayne Christensen (who writes a fun newsletter about food and drink, Vintage Morels) made the same discovery. He started his retirement by uprooting himself from the mid-South to begin again in the Pacific Northwest. Separating from many good friends was hard, but he expected to make new friends in his new home. Then Covid hit, and making new social ties fell off the table. Instead, Wayne turned to rekindling and nurturing old friendships from his past. Through email and telephone he has reconnected with college friends, work friends, and friends from every epoch of his life.

The difference between friends and old friends, in my mind, boils down to this: Friends know what you do and what you say; old friends know who you are. They know Original You, before the trappings of education, marriage, career, successes, disappointments. They still recognize Original You even through hair loss, weight gain, wrinkles, and wear and tear. They see through all that to your essence, and they recognize that it hasn’t changed since you were both children. When you are in the presence of old friends, there are glimmering moments when you feel the presence of that innocent child, Original You, once more.

It doesn’t get any better than that.