Totally Off Topic

I am giving you the warning ahead of time. This entry will have absolutely nothing to do with foster care or adoption. It will have to do with life though.

I grew up in what was then a small town outside of Boston. All the houses were the same. Ranch houses built on slabs. Built mostly for returning GIs who had Veteran's benefits and could buy a home with no money down. The houses sold for around $16,000. I wasn't even two years old when we moved in and have no memory of living anywhere before this house.

When I was four years old a new family moved in to the next house. There was a boy who was one year older than I was. Besides myself and the new boy, there were two boys that lived right across the street. The four of us did everything together. We played ball together. We had a tree house together. We were in cub scouts together. We were each others best friends and for a while only friends. We were all we needed though. Obviously there are many stories of the four of us growing up that would certainly be good fodder for a blog, but that is not what I had in mind today.

About 2 months ago I got on facebook. (can you see where this is going?). Sure enough I found the boy that lived next door. My best friend. The boy who I played baseball with almost every evening in the good weather. The boy who knew more about me than anyone else in the world. The boy who I knew more about then anyone else in the world. I hadn't seen or talked to him in almost 30 years. It was wonderful getting in touch with him. We were able to write on facebook and talk about old times. He had some pictures from the old neighborhood and it was great looking at those. The only bad part was I found out that one of the boys that lived across the street had suffered a severe stroke of some kind and was in a home and basically a vegetable. The other boy that lived across the street was somehow estranged from the family and had only been back in town from the west coast once. So that left me and the boy from next door. I will refer to him as "D".

Monday night I had dinner with "D". What a wonderful time! I was travelling on a business trip to a town about 20 miles from where he lives. We really aren't all that far apart. Only about 4 hours total. We made plans to get together. We talked about all those old stories. It was amazing finding out what part of the stories we remembered togather and what we remembered separately. We could have talked to each other for days on end.

It was also great to talk about how our lives had gone over the past 30 years since we had last seen each other. What was even better was coming to the realization that we had such a similar outlook on life and had been so many of the same places, that we could have been great friends even if we never lived next door to each other.

You know that last line of Stand By Me........."I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was twelve, Jesus, does anyone?"

Well, I am happy to say I now have a friend that I also had fifty years ago, and after only one meal (granted it took almost 3 hours)I have a friend like the one I had when I was twelve. After all, he was one I had when I was twelve.

I am so looking forward to spending more time with him. Hoping to play golf together at the end of the month.

Like I said, totally off topic, but I felt the need to write about it.

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