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Writer's Block: Friendship
Dec. 24th, 2014 09:19 amWriter's block has been resurrected! Yay! I always appreciated a daily question to get my mind working a bit; this iteration will be weekly on Mondays, it seems, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
Who was your first best friend? Are you still in contact with them? If not, what would you say to them if you could talk to them today?
I posted previously about my 50th elementary school reunion in the Big Apple, which was an amazing blast from the past. There has been a core of us that has stayed in touch over the years, but getting so many of us together in one place after half a century was an amazing experience.
One of those present qualifies as my first best friend:
There he sits, in the back row next to our sweet nursery school teacher. I'm not going to tell you which one I am, but if you know anything at all about me, it will be immediately obvious.
Walt and I were good, good buddies. We did all sorts of things together. We had a lot of similar interests. We would visit each other's homes regularly, go trick-or-treating together, visited museums, attended parties, became passionate about Duncan yo-yos together, collected Matchbox cars, enjoyed Lost in Space and Green Acres, had birds, loved cats, shared many other friends, and once wickedly threw mud at his parents' car when he was visiting (I lived out in the suburbs for a year) so perhaps he wouldn't have to go home so early.
Walt had many interesting experiences in his own right. He once related to me the tale of how, as a young lad working one of his first jobs, he was invited in by a kind lady for milk and cookies or some such. Turned out it was Katharine Hepburn. How would that be?
Sixth grade came and went, and the boys at Hunter College Elementary School were all expelled (Hunter High at that time only accepted girls.) We went our separate ways, Walt to McBurney and myself to Cheshire; time rolled on, I raised my family in Utah and he settled in California, where he went on to become a successful producer, listing Spin City among his credits.
The astonishing thing about this friendship - and many others that we had at the time - is their durability. Over time, we have been able to get together in this group or that, and it was as though we had seen each other yesterday, instead of after 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years; threads of conversation were picked up without a beat.
You can see Walt and me in this picture taken in 2012 as we toured the old HCES campus; several of us in this picture can be seen in the shot from 1954.
Walt and I stay in touch, and I always look forward to the opportunity to get together with him and his delightful wife for another mini-reunion. Relationships like this can't be bought.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Who was your first best friend? Are you still in contact with them? If not, what would you say to them if you could talk to them today?
I posted previously about my 50th elementary school reunion in the Big Apple, which was an amazing blast from the past. There has been a core of us that has stayed in touch over the years, but getting so many of us together in one place after half a century was an amazing experience.
One of those present qualifies as my first best friend:
There he sits, in the back row next to our sweet nursery school teacher. I'm not going to tell you which one I am, but if you know anything at all about me, it will be immediately obvious.
Walt and I were good, good buddies. We did all sorts of things together. We had a lot of similar interests. We would visit each other's homes regularly, go trick-or-treating together, visited museums, attended parties, became passionate about Duncan yo-yos together, collected Matchbox cars, enjoyed Lost in Space and Green Acres, had birds, loved cats, shared many other friends, and once wickedly threw mud at his parents' car when he was visiting (I lived out in the suburbs for a year) so perhaps he wouldn't have to go home so early.
Walt had many interesting experiences in his own right. He once related to me the tale of how, as a young lad working one of his first jobs, he was invited in by a kind lady for milk and cookies or some such. Turned out it was Katharine Hepburn. How would that be?
Sixth grade came and went, and the boys at Hunter College Elementary School were all expelled (Hunter High at that time only accepted girls.) We went our separate ways, Walt to McBurney and myself to Cheshire; time rolled on, I raised my family in Utah and he settled in California, where he went on to become a successful producer, listing Spin City among his credits.
The astonishing thing about this friendship - and many others that we had at the time - is their durability. Over time, we have been able to get together in this group or that, and it was as though we had seen each other yesterday, instead of after 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years; threads of conversation were picked up without a beat.
You can see Walt and me in this picture taken in 2012 as we toured the old HCES campus; several of us in this picture can be seen in the shot from 1954.
Walt and I stay in touch, and I always look forward to the opportunity to get together with him and his delightful wife for another mini-reunion. Relationships like this can't be bought.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
