Old Friends

Throughout our lifetime, most friends will come and go.  People change.  For better or for worse, we all evolve and wind up either leaving people behind or we are left behind ourselves.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Everyone and everything serves some purpose in our lives.  It’s just that sometimes the road comes to an end.  A dead end doesn’t have to be a car crash.  Sometimes, the car just crawls to a stop at the end of the pavement, you get out and start walking.  I’ve experienced friendship car crashes as well as dead ends.  What is consistent in both cases is that there are memories that always survive.

The memories, by and large, are positive reminders of good times.  As I think back on my youth and the friends I had, I realize that I still have a lot of those friends in my life to some degree.  Some are distant Facebook friends, some I still talk with regularly.  Then there are those that disappeared from my life.  Just vanished into thin air.

My best friend at 16 lived in my neighborhood.  We were inseparable.  We were essentially one person.  We knew what each other was thinking, what we were going through.  We had the same interests.  I mean, really the same interests.  So much of my likes today started with that friendship.  Horror movies, baseball cards, playing basketball, music, all came to life during that time.

I remember one night sitting in my room and flipping through the channels (which was a nightly ritual once I got my own tv).  Most of the time it was Sportscenter or  the Braves but sometimes I’d get lucky and find a good horror movie.  That night was one of those nights.  A zombie flick!  And I’m talking about 1993, not the zombie craze we are all in now.  I was an original zombie guy!  And this movie was good.  It was loaded with awesome quotable phrases, which at the time was a key component to a good movie for me.  “If we’re going to do something, let’s do it.  If we’re going to stand around and BS, let’s do it in the cellar!  Where it’s safe….”  I jumped in about 20 minutes into the movie.  We didn’t have an on screen guide back then and we also didn’t subscribe to the ever popular TV Guide so I was watching a movie I knew nothing about, including the title.  But I watched it until the end, which was after midnight on a school night but it kept me glued to the screen.

Now, my friend rode the bus with me and we met at my house about 745 every morning.  He walks in with this excited look on his face and says “I saw the best zombie movie last night!” I said, “Me too!”  We began quoting the movie to each other and thus was the introduction of what would become the most watched movie in Laurel Lane history.  I later found out that it was Night of the Living Dead, the 90’s remake.  I still own it to this day and can speak through the lines from beginning to end.

Of course, that led to many spinoff’s; Return of the Living Dead 1, 2 and 3,  Video Dead, Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Dawn of The Dead.  Basically, movies about the dead were our forte.  What’s weird is that I haven’t seen or spoken to that friend in probably 15 years but I think if I ran into him, the first thing he’d say would be something along the lines of “They’re coming to get you Barbara” or “I don’t think I can do this Bert.”  I would laugh uncontrollably and feel like I was 16 for a moment again.  Those are memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life regardless of our absence from each other’s lives.  Some things will never fade: movie quotes, horrible baseball card trades where we took advantage of each other, owning many a basketball court and hodie wedgies will forever be a part of who I am.  I won’t even begin to explain the hodie wedgie but trust me, it was devastating.

I guess the point is that you should always hold onto and cherish the good memories you make with people, no matter whether those people are around anymore or not.  Those memories live inside us and can help sustain us during times of struggle.  They can take you to a place or a time when your burden was negligible and your responsibilities were a fraction of what they are now as an adult.  I’m sure all of us have our own set of memories that we go to in those times.  Sometimes, we can even pick up the phone and call the person that made the memory with us.  But if you’re like me, you can just pop in an old DVD and watch some undead struggle to break into an old farmhouse and just think about how simple things should be.  Just cherish those moments…..

Joey