What Price Friendship?
I was all set to do my weekly rant this week about electric vehicles and then something happened that I just had to write about. On March 2, 2012 I spent a couple of hours texting back and forth with my son, trying to convince him to delay his trip from East Lansing, Michigan to just west of the the Florida panhandle. His spring break planned travel would have taken him directly through the heart of the storm, at precisely the wrong time. I’m thankful that he and his friends heeded the advice they were given and delayed the start of their trip long enough to let the storm pass through. But that’s not what this story is about.
The weather maps looked particularly ugly and a storm of historic proportions seemed to be brewing, far earlier in the year than anyone would have expected. As the day went on, it appeared to be even worse than everyone had expected. By the end of the day, dozens had died and many, many millions of dollars of damage had been incurred. The devastation was wide-spread, from central Indiana, through Kentucky and Tennessee and into Alabama.
The Storm Field on March 3, 2012
But, as bad as that news was, that's not what this story is about, either. This story is about the enduring quality of friendship and what we go through when our true friends are in harms way. I have a dear old friend, who now lives in the Indianapolis area. He's a stubborn old cuss now (he wasn't always that way - life has hardened him a bit). He and I and a few old high school friends get together each year in Wisconsin to play golf. We've been doing that for longer than I can remember. We all went to high school together in the early 70's in a very rural part of central Wisconsin. But our friendship has never really stopped. We lost track of each other for a few years after high school, but after that brief interlude, we've stayed frequently in touch with each other. "In touch" is a good way of saying that we rip into each other on a frequent basis via email, knowing full well what it takes for each of us to trash-talk in just the right way to get under the other guys skin. Now that's true friendship! But that's not really what this story is about, either.
Since March 3rd, I haven't heard from my friend (we'll call him "Bob"). As far as I know, he was well out of harms way. I know that I shouldn't be worried about him, but for some reason, I keep thinking about him. I keep thinking about looking forward to that next disparaging email (we're on opposite sides of the fence, politically). I keep thinking about all the fun we've had over the years or the golf trip we have planned for this summer, or the time that he didn't drink enough water out on the course on a hot summer day and, as a result, went through a rather severe episode of heat stroke. I'm thinking about the time I showed up at his wedding because it was important that one of us make it to such an important milestone in his life. It bothers me that I keep thinking about all this stuff -- because I know he's OK. He's got to be OK. My buddy Don says he's probably just off "pounding his pud." That's exactly the kind of thing that we would have said to each other in 1974. We haven't changed much. Our friendship is still intact.
I tried to call him on his cell phone twice yesterday. All I got was a recording. Bummer. It was last night that it dawned on me..... Friends and family are more important than just about anything else. Money, cars, houses, property, boats, sleds, fancy vacations -- it's all just window trimmings. But friends are for a lifetime -- and when one of your friends may be in harms way, you think about them. Gimme a call, Bob.