What Is It About Childhood Friends Part 2

One day in late summer 1978 I stepped out the backdoor of my house and walked down the driveway. Upon reaching the sidewalk, for years, I turned right to head to my friend Todd's house, but this was a new day. Todd had left for basic training in the U.S. Air Force. It was a new day, a day to walk a new path without my shadow. It was a pivotal day. Did I hesitate? Did I think about Todd? Did I wonder how things would be? Maybe? Maybe not? It did not matter. I turned left and took my first step into a world I never had dreamed would be.

It was a different world. No longer would I run around with kids who were older than me. Most of them had moved onto jobs and looked towards their future, not towards summer vacation baseball games. As they traveled new paths, the paths that led to the baseball field at Stahl's Field became overgrown and disappeared into the grass and weeds that thrived in the areas outside of the field. Perhaps somewhere deep in the tangles the sounds of a crack of the bat, youthful shouts, boyhood swearing, and a lot of laughter still echo. Maybe on some cosmic path a boy on a bike still pulls up and shouts 'Hey, can I play?' Of course you can.?

I was now the oldest in my new group. Steve was a year younger than me and a year older than Dave and Tim. Ron, too, but he would not become a constant presence with us until Dave moved near him and his new house became a focal point in our lives. While I had taken many cues from the older Todd, that did not happen with my new friends. I may have been the eldest, but I was also the newest kid around. True, I knew all of them and had played with them over the years, but I was the new guy. But, it felt natural like everything but my physical essence already belonged there. We were more equals in a way. Equals in the mysteries, miseries, and mayhem of the teenage years.

The trials, tribulations, and travails of being teenagers played a key part of the deep bonds we formed with one another. What could be more difficult than that stage of life where our peers' imprimatur held so much sway while at the same time the forces of independence developed? How were we supposed to be independent individuals while needing routine approval from friends and classmates? Then things got worse. Our own bodies played the cruelest practical joke we ever experienced. At a time crying out for confidence and assurance our hormones monkeyed with our physical and emotional states throwing us into awkwardness and vulnerability. Growth hormones distorted our features into something found in an amusement park mirror while huge red dots blotted our cheeks, hair appeared in strange places, and voices ran the scale of notes as we spoke. How could anyone be confident when looking like something from a freak show? Meanwhile, we became acutely aware of the power of attractiveness in others, which only served to make us desperate to be attractive. Our cold hearted, but burning hormones held no mercy for us. Together the five of us formed our own proverbial port, our sanctuary, in the storm of adolescent confusion and angst.

We celebrated successes together. We commiserated with and supported one another when setbacks battered our egos and confidence. We encouraged each other, ready to offer advice to help a friend. We puzzled over the enigma that was girls. I should point out that for a time Steve only made cameo appearances because he had a girlfriend. The rest of us felt both betrayed by and envious of him. He always came back, usually when perplexed by his girlfriend. Of course, boys being boys, we fought with one another, both verbally and physically. There was one football season where for two weeks straight, at least that is the time span I always remember it being, where Steve and I fought, more wrestling than punching, but not absent of punching either, every time we were on opposing teams. We always showed up the next day for the next game, however. Mostly, we laughed together. Shared laughter originating deep within the belly proved a great balm in a topsy-turvy teenage existence.

Being teenagers, we did a lot of silly things. There used to be a television show called Make Me Laugh where comedians took turns trying to make a contestant laugh. We had a short period where we decided to give it a try. One of us sat in a kitchen chair while the others went to various extremes to elicit a laugh or even a chortle. Without going into any of those details that remain in my brain, we cracked jokes, told stories, and used physical 'humor' that only juvenile boys deem funny. I am not sure if those details are fuzzy because my memory is hazy. More likely, I suspect my frontal lobe has no desire to relive those moments as a defense mechanism to keep us safe from embarrassment and humiliation. Another guaranteed laugh for us came from the 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit starring Bert Reynolds, Sally Fields, and Jackie Gleason. How many hours did we spend spouting our favorite lines from the movie? I have no idea, because we were laughing so hard. Time just evaporated from our consciousness.?

Several times when we reunited as adults it only took one quote from the movie and the race was on. It was like a stream of the space-time continuum connected a part of each of us to those silly boys of the 1970s. We were together. We were laughing. We were kids again. When you are young, you think how wonderful it is to have good friends like the five of us. Now, as men in our sixties we see the depths of our good fortune. We were and still are lucky to have one another. The weird part is that being together is not easy. It is natural. The way things are supposed to be. That feeling we share when reunited says more about the value of our friendship than any words ever could.

In Dave's new house, his room was in the basement and became a bastion of our times together. There we listened to music, almost exclusively Rock-n-Roll. If it had a guitar solo, even better if it also had a drum solo, it was for us and we turned up the volume. All that pent up teenage energy meant we could not simply sit there while the music surged. One day during a Jimi Hendrix song, Dave took the belt from his robe and tied it around his head. He then put on a virtuoso air guitar display. That's right Dave rocked his air guitar way before Keanu Reeves' iconic performance in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. We were truly lucky. We had survived Disco and MTV had not yet exploded onto the scene.?

Rock-n-Roll was really our only choice. In our neighborhood listening to anything else or, God forbid, proclaiming a song good from outside the Holy of Holies in music risked ridicule, ostracism, or, given the right circumstances, fisticuffs. Thus, we once again confronted the conundrum of teenage life. The drive for independence confronted a metal and black leather wall of peer pressure–one of the greatest forces on the adolescent psyche. How was it possible to be yourself when squeezed by the accepted ideas and behaviors of your peers? Our group offered succor where we could dare to tread into new realms. It was a space where we could test the waters without lifelong judgments on our character. There were limits, however. I am not sure I ever mentioned that I sometimes liked ABBA songs. I bet they, too, secretly enjoyed similar forbidden fruit.

We also played a lot of sports. What else were we supposed to do? Play video games? To be honest we were a bit captivated by Pong after Steve and Tim got one on their countertop television. It was not mesmerizing enough to keep us inside for too long, however. We played a lot of baseball with other kids our age or a bit younger during summer vacation. Most of those games occurred behind the elementary school where right field was a creek and, therefore, an out. It also could mean the end of the game until someone could save up enough to buy a new baseball. Four of us (Dave, Ron, Tim, and I) spent a lot of time on Dave's basketball court / driveway. It was not a regulation court nor had a regulation hoop. But, it served us well. At that time, we were all about the same height. All we needed was dry cement and a bit of warmth. Where was Steve? Probably with his girlfriend. To be brutally honest that was okay, because as a basketball player Steve made a great pinball or maybe a Weeble. The big story on the court was how Dave and I dominated Ron and Tim for centuries. Okay, it was less than that, probably two years, but I am sure it felt like centuries to them. All was right in my micro-basketball world until both Ron and Tim grew. Our dominance collapsed like the Roman Empire when the Vandals ransacked Rome, which was kind of how I viewed it. Despite the ransacking, Rome's impact echoed through the millennia. Like Rome, our dominance still echoes amongst us. Proof that childhood glories can live forever.

Football is the sport I most associate with my friends. Just to clarify, Steve, Tim, and I bowled together for a long time. Bowling, however, does not qualify as a sport. Any contest where the consumption of beer or other alcoholic refreshments (margaritas anyone?) does not drastically reduce performance is a game, not a sport. The three of us also played slow-pitch softball together until our mid-thirties. It was those football games, however, that left a lasting impression. Football was just right for boys going from their mid-teens to young men in their early twenties. The very essence of the game created an arena where surging testosterone coupled with the need to demonstrate feats of speed, strength, and agility worthy of being a man could be played out within reasonable constraints. Where else could you pummel a best friend, talk trash about it, go home, and beat each other silly the next day without hard feelings?

Despite the sandlot nature of our games, we played them with intensity. This was our chance to prove what we had and who we were. We hit hard, threw hard, ran hard, talked hard, and spit hard. We took Dave's stiff arm to the nose and played on. We tackled Steve even though he ran like he was mad at the ground with knees and elbows pumping like lawnmower blades. We could only hope not to take a blow to the head when tackling him. We sometimes bulldozed our way over our opponent. Was there a chance to evade? Sometimes, but, sometimes, that was not the point. We were adolescents without a whole lot of sense. Or, sometimes, sensitivity. I once hit one of our friends so hard he cried. My chest puffed up with the tenacity of the hit. I was Jack Lambert incarnate on that one play. The sad part was that it took me a few days to realize I had hurt a friend. What can I say? Too often our hormones blinded us to the greater reality of life. If it helps, I feel terrible about it now. What amazes me more about our games is that I do not recall any broken bones. Blind luck plays a bit of a role during those young years of life.

Besides, who knew when a girl would walk past or decide to stop and watch for a while? We were like big horn rams smashing into one another to prove our toughness and woo the ladies. We needed to be rugged, not always easy to do when shaving was not yet a daily necessity. It was important to look good for the girls, too. We disdained long sleeves or sweatshirts when it rained or snowed. Rugged. Tough. Manly. A few years later, probably when we were in our late twenties, we decided to head to the school and play a game for old times' sake. The temperature was a good bit below zero. At one point Dave turned to me and said 'You can tell we're getting old. We don't care what we look like as long as we're warm.' Ironclad proof of the value of the frontal lobe. After teaching high school for many years, I realized most of us were wasting our time performing for our elusive females. While teenage girls certainly pay attention to teenage boys, they often find the boys' actions to be immature. We did not know that and would not have believed it. Between the competition and the potential watchful eyes of a girl even the mildest mannered of us could find ourselves full of braggadocio. Even Steve, who had a girlfriend. Not that that bothered the rest of us.

We did not talk much about what we would do after high school other than in broad generalities. If I remember correctly, Steve, like Todd, thought about doing electronics. He did work in a small shop for a while right after high school, but he did not become an electrician. As for his brother Tim, I do not remember him mentioning anything specific. Dave and Ron went to the local college, University of Toledo, which was a commuter school. I was already there. I made one of my bigger mistakes in life when I decided to major to get a job instead of studying something that interested me. I majored in business instead of journalism, which interested me at the time. Business seemed practical, even if I did not have a passion for it. Not that it mattered. There were plenty of opportunities in the city for anyone with a high school diploma or higher.

It was the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president and, as Gordon Gecko said in the movie, Wall Street, greed was good. What did that mean for the manufacturing, mostly auto-related, jobs in Toledo? I do not have a fondness nor a sense of nostalgia for the 1980s. It was not a good time in our part of the country. First came the attack on unions and we lived in a union town. If that did not affect the good jobs, major corporations began moving production facilities to the southern United States where wages were lower and unions barely existed. Men who were making $20 to $25 per hour scrambled to find any job they could. One friend's father ended up working retail at a liquor store. Then the venture capitalist swooped in looking for companies with potential efficiency after a bit of restructuring would allow them to flip them in a short amount of time. Restructuring usually meant eliminating jobs, reducing payroll of workers and consolidating regional offices. My sister's company, for example, moved most of the work at her office to Cleveland. Jobs disappeared. Those forces ripped out the soul of a vibrant city, discarding an empty shell to corrode into rust. The world we had grown up in disappeared in a matter of a few years.?

The Rust Belt cinched itself around us just at the time we entered adulthood with our hopes and dreams uncertain at best, broken at worst. Yet, just like our parents, we looked to get a job, a wife, and a place all our own. Why? Because that was what was done back then and had been done for a long time. The power of expected behavior created a paradigm of how our world worked and we acted accordingly. Like many people back there and then, we had our ups and downs, both professional and personal. Whether it was a lost job or a dissolving marriage / relationship, we were there for one another as much as we could be. We strove to do the best we could with what we had. What we implicitly understood is that no matter what happened we would always have each other, a bedrock of solidity even in the most turbulent of times. I hung out almost every night at Tim's place for a while during one of his tough spots. There was a time in the late 1990s when I was going through my own rough patch. Tim called me several times a week. At that point, neither of us lived in Toledo. He offered me a place to live until I could get on my feet. The economy in his new home town was strong. I almost took him up on his offer, but then an opportunity arose that profoundly changed my life for the better. But, Tim's offer… how lucky can I be to have a friend like him?

For a long time, I considered Toledo suffered from depression in both economic and psychological outlook. Looking back, it is easy to see that with each year of economic struggle the city and its community did not suffer from depression. It was infected with resignation. We resigned ourselves that we were stuck with our new reality as if it were fated by the gods. Unlike the ancient Greeks, these gods were real and lived on Wall Street. The resignation meant that most people viewed any proposal to help the economy as pointless, doomed to fail. So things failed. It was inevitable that some or all of us might have to leave Toledo. The five of us would not grow old together.

I always had a bit of George Bailey, from It's A Wonderful Life, in me. It was not a surprise that I would be the first to go. I left twice, in fact, but returned for a few years each time. Dave was next to leave heading to Indiana and first to make his departure permanent. After a few years, he established a wonderful home and life in La Porte. I could not be happier for him. Of all of us, Tim was the staunchest defender of Toledo, for good or bad. A fantastic opportunity came his way in the late 1990s, but he would have to relocate to Dallas. He surprised a lot of people when he left. In the summer of 2000, he invited us to come visit. We had a blast being together again. Like a lot of Americans, the financial crisis of 2008 hit him hard. He returned to Toledo with his son to be nearer to his parents. Ron and Steve have stayed in the greater Toledo area the whole time.?

That Dallas visit remains a fond memory for me, because I was heading to a new adventure myself. I had taken a teaching job at a boarding school in Switzerland that started in August 2000. Tim visited me my first year there. I showed him the Swiss Alps and then we headed to Rome for a few days. It is the best trip I have taken with the exception of those I took with my wife, whom I met at that boarding school. Over the next twenty-three years, Kate and I have worked and taught in seven countries and three continents. When my grandmother, the matriarch of my family, started having health issues, I spent part of every summer vacation and a few Christmas ones in Toledo. Tim always put us up at his home. He made sure to have one big party every year I was there. Dave and his wife would come in and stay at his place as well. We were back together again, even if only briefly. My visits home to Toledo became fewer after Kate and I bought a place in Portland, Oregon where we would spend summers. COVID trapped us in Korea for four straight years. It was the longest period of my life without seeing my great friends.?

Unfortunately, it was a funeral that brought me home last November for Dave's mother, who, bless her, put up with us and treated us so kindly, even when we were doofuses. I want to write doofi, but that sounds much too dignified for teenage behavior. It was the first time in five years I was reunited with my friends. Like always, however, those five years, fifteen years, twenty-five years, thirty-five years, forty-five years melted away the moment we were together again. Our time with one another as teenagers and young men formed a bond forged in the mysteries, struggles, and glories of young men. It is a bond that goes beyond friendship, surpassed only by those with my family. It is not surprising, because in its own special way, we are family, who have been there for each other no matter what and no matter where.?

What is it about childhood friends? The truth is that most of us do not often think about our friends from when we were kids. As children, we lived in the moment playing with our friends. It mattered less what we did than with whom we did it. The importance was being with people we liked. An easy freedom lived in those moments. Those times pale in intensity to myriad concerns and responsibilities adulthood brings with it. That is why our recollections, if and when we think of those days, consist of broader impressions and generalities absent of the sharp edges that can result from serious issues we later encountered. If we are fortunate, warm feelings fill us when thinking of those long ago days, even if the details blur in our recollections. That is why thoughts of childhood friends tend to be sporadic or, more likely, sparked by some action or smell or photo.?

The other truth about childhood friends is that we lose touch with them like I did with Todd. Life choices lead to new worlds, new locations, and new people. Most of us meet a significant other and begin forging our own families and / or lifetime memories. Our language also diminishes the importance of those days. We dismiss things as childish ways, childish thoughts, or childish dreams. Things that hold no importance in a serious world. Some of the kids we played with for countless hours recede into the fog of time, some to disappear forever. Granted technology and social media have made it easier to reconnect with some of those people. There is comfort in reconnecting with them, even if we rarely, if ever review their online presence. But, we know it is there just like they were all those decades ago.?

Then there are those who have been gifted with friends who transcend mere friendship. I have been gifted twice. Todd and I shared boyhoods that, at least in reflection, seem lifted from a 1950s television show. We were more than friends. We were each other's Shadow. I could not have had a better friend nor a better childhood than the one I had with him. Then, after Todd entered the military, I was enriched a second time. Five boys became connected with one another through the rough roads from high schoolers into early adulthood. Only to have the connection strengthen with time, continuing on even when life separated us by hundreds or thousands of miles. My childhood friends live within me still. What is it about childhood friends? In my case, they fill my heart and my soul with the wonders of a lifetime.