Forty Eight Years
In early May I went to visit my son Mickey. He was in Denver for several weeks doing training for his new job at the Veterans Administration in Lincoln, Nebraska. Denver is closer to Boise than Lincoln so I thought about driving down to visit him. When Mickey called and told me the Milwaukee Brewers would be in town for a series against the Colorado Rockies, I had to make the trip. I grew up in Milwaukee and I am a big Brewers fan. So is Mickey - he must have inherited it from me. It was a four game series so I made sure that I was there in time for us to go to the first game on Thursday night.
Meeting Dave again after forty eight years
We went the next night as well but since Friday was a workday for him I was on my own all day until he got out of class. I decided to see if I could get together with an old friend.
About a year ago I got a friend request on Facebook. It was from Dave Street, one of my high school classmates. Back then there were four of us who were close friends: Scott, Mike, Dave and me, who spent almost all of our time together. We were pretty nerdy (I know, you find that hard to believe). We were all good students, especially in science and math. Our main extracurricular activity was the Chess Club, playing in a city-wide high school league and even going to regional and national tournaments. After high school graduation we all went off to different universities and quickly lost touch with each other. After Dave and I connected on Facebook we did some catching up via email. He lives near Denver so I thought I would contact him to see if we could meet in person.
Dave works at Lockheed Martin on the big vaccuum chamber that they use for testing satellites. Since he works the night shift he suggested that we could meet for breakfast. He came by my hotel at 7 am (yes, I really got up that early) and we walked over to Denny's. It was amazing to see him again after so long. The most obvious change was physical. The last time that we had seen each other we had been teenagers. Now we were old men in our mid-sixties. It was a dramatic change but we still recognized each other.
We had been extremely close friends in high school but hadn't seen each other for forty eight years. My experience is that sometimes when you haven't seen someone for a few years, you find that when you get together you no longer have anything in common and it's hard to find something to talk about. Dave and I didn't have that problem. We talked for hours, about jobs, family, travels, hobbies. I guess we are still both nerds and have a lot in common.
Eventually Denny's started to fill up for lunch and we figured we needed to give up our table. It was great to see an old friend after so long. We agreed that we would get together again, and sooner than forty eight years from now.
