Old Friends

This morning I had a friend request on Facebook. It was my childhood best friend Steve, who moved to Ohio in the summer after 5th grade. I was very sad to lose him, but it may have been better than what happened with a lot of my elementary school friends. We ended up drifting apart and hardly speaking once we got into middle school and high school. The same thing happened to Steve and I, but I chalked it up to being a distance problem. When you get to middle school, you're no longer with the same people that you've been with for the last 5 years, and there's a lot more people to talk to. So you do drift apart, but I think you get more life experience that way.

Back to Steve. I don't know if we met in kindergarten or first grade. We didn't become really close till probably 3rd or 4th grade. I could be wrong, because short periods of time when you're 10 seem like they lasted an eternity when you're approaching middle age. I think it might have been the Beatles that brought us together. We were both big fans, and he had a lot more of their records than I did. He made me some tapes of them, and I remember him loaning me his white vinyl copy of the White Album, which I didn't have because it was a double album and therefore cost prohibitive. One of my most vivid memories of Steve was on the morning of December 9th, 1980. My mom had left me a note that John Lennon had been murdered the night before, and I went downstairs to watch it on the news. I was sad about it, but I didn't really know yet what had been lost. After awhile, I thought I would go to the school early (it was across the street from my house) and see if Steve was there yet. He apparently had the same thought, as he was walking up my sidewalk when I went out the door (the only time that I can remember him doing this). He managed to look stricken and angry at the same time. I don't remember what we said to each other, but it was good to be together then.

We spent a lot of time together. We would wait outside the school in the mornings, and many times we would cross Hamilton Blvd. and go to the Corner Deli to get baseball cards or Jolly Rancher Apple Stix. We made up a band called the Jumping Doodles, and I had a tape recorder and we recorded a song that Steve had written called "We're All Going To Camp Gitchee Gumee." Another classic was "Lick Your Hand and Smell It." This is what 10 year olds do, I guess. He had a blue hoodie that had the string in the hood, which I coveted. I had to get my clothes at Sears, and they apparently didn't have any blue hoodies or my mom wouldn't get it for me. I finally got my own blue hoodie last year, and it makes me think about Steve whenever I wear it.

If I'm remembering correctly, his moving was a sudden thing, because I remember it hitting me like a ton of bricks. I was very upset, I may have even cried about it. I was moved enough to get him a going away present, which was AC-DC's Dirty Deeds album. I went to his house to give it to him a day or two before he moved, but he wasn't home.

I suppose we did actually drift apart. His moving meant we didn't see each other everyday anymore, but we could write letters to each other. He wrote me a letter, but I don't think I ever wrote him back. I was never much of a communicator, which extends to my adult life. I did call him once when I was on a trip to Michigan, and I think that's the last contact we had, until this morning. It's much easier to keep in touch with people these days with the internet. Steve still lives in Ohio, but Ohio is a lot closer these days. When I was a kid, I had to get permission to call someone who was that far away, and visiting was pretty much out of the question unless we were taking a vacation in the area (I didn't make it to Ohio until 2005, on a Beatles related trip, and I think we were very close to where Steve now lives. Dammit). But now, I can email, or catch up on Facebook, or call (which I probably won't, as I hate the phone, sorry Steve). I can even drive out there and see him if I want, which is not a bad idea at all.