(Apologies to CJH)
Over the last two years I have become aware of friendships that I’ve let slide for one reason or another. Whether it be because the person moved far (or relatively far) away, was at a different place in their life, or just out of sheer laziness on the part of one or both parties, things just sort of slipped below the surface.
Two examples of that are two of my three roommates from college. One (The Great White Hunter) I had never met before we were placed together our freshman year at Auburn and the other (CJH) I knew from high school but we ran in very different circles at the time and while polite, we had never been called what I consider friends.
So, during the first few weeks of sharing a prison cell-sized room with TGWH, we ran across two guys that lived below us and one room over from ours. Oddly enough, it was CJH and one of his best friends and both guys I’d at least known since 8th grade but, as I said, had never spent much time with.
The four of us became pretty close during our freshman year. We also met four guys from the 3rd floor of our dorm that were our cohorts as well as our competition in little things like 4-on-4 flag football or basketball or whatever. Those guys (Kaye and Rowher and Robbins and Meyer) completed our non-Greek circle friends and that would more or less stay true throughout my (incomplete) career on The Plains.
After our freshman year, several of us had to stay in Auburn (either in school or working) to gain in-state residency to lower tuition. At that point, we (TGWH, CJH, Jon and myself) decided to room together for our sophomore year and, during that summer, CJH, Jon and I would secure and reside in our next residence and await the return of TGWH from his vacation-like existence at his home on Georgia’s Gold Coast.
(BTW the four “other guys” mentioned above went on to share residence as well and would forever be referred to as “The Brooks Boys.” Stupid? Of course. But it is what it is.
That summer I got a lot closer with Jon and CJH, buy primarily CJH. Although Jon was working with us, he spent a lot of his time at the Sig Ep house and with his fellow midnight-oil burning engineering students, which left me and CJH to ponder and party and whatever.
We became pretty close that summer, sharing time on the job, evenings at our apartment, playing golf, bouncing checks everywhere in town, and generally having a good time. And when TGWH rejoined us, we were our own little force of nature. School became almost an afterthought for me (as my grades and graduation status would later indicate), but I almost didn’t care. We were living the good life in relative poverty and enjoying the shit out of it.
The same happened for our third year, except we moved to a two story sweet ass townhome near the police station and Guthries, while the Brooks Boys moved into their new swanky digs at College Park (where GBD also resided).
Anyway, I’ve blathered on and on here. Even after I left school in the summer of 1989, I was that I was certain that these seven guys would be my friends forever and we’d spend our adult lives reliving our college years and having those “Big Chill” moments where we all got together to laugh and drink and think and mourn and do whatever it is that lifelong friends do for one another.
Naive? Sure. But still, I was 21 and didn’t know any better.
Then real life came along for all of us.
While the other three stayed in touch (more or less) including returning to Auburn for football games and stuff, and just generally staying in contact.
I, on the other hand, was effectively a college dropout trying to survive along with a fiancee and I didn’t have the time or money to make said trips.
Sadly, I fell out of contact with all of them. We did all get back together for the 1996 Auburn-Georgia game in Auburn and that was great, and we all said we wouldn’t let that happen again.
Until we did.
We got together for a wedding show in 1997 for CJH and his fiancee, and that was the last time I talked to any of these folks. That shower was held at CJH’s dad’s farmhouse near Lake Jackson, and that property alone had given us enough memories to last a lifetime. From fishing to playing poker drunk in a house that was 35 degrees with no electricity to trick shooting clay pigeons out back to being thrown from CJH’s S10 pickup whilst doing donuts in a horse-poo filled pasture to horseback riding to hayrides. That place was full of memories.
TGWH (at the time) had a daughter named after our fortieth president (look it up), Jon was engaged and GBD and I had already been married for about five years and were just starting to get our feet under us.
And then, after CJH’s wedding, we (or at least I) fell out of touch.
Then, about two years ago, I started casually trying to find CJH. I had somewhere heard that his father had been sick and I wanted to check in with CJH and let him know we were thinking about him and his family. I didn’t look all that hard really, but I did Google searches and white pages searches, etc., but had no luck.
Then, after everything that I’ve been thru the past six months, I decided to step up the effort. I contacted some folks thru our 20th reunion website that had been friends of CJH growing up, and eventually I got an email address for him. I sent a pretty sappy email (not unlike this blog entry). I sent that email about ten days ago and got no response.
And then last night, I got a call from someone purporting to be the Auburn Police Department calling about some bounced checks from 1990.
It was CJH.
You can cue the sappy music now. I don’t care. We talked for a good while, and after the awkward first few moments of trying to pace a conversation that is somehow going to bridge the gap of ten years, it was great. CJH is still married to the same woman and has a two year old daughter. He’s living in Florida and putting his degree to good use.
Sadly, his father lost a battle with pancreatic cancer last year and I felt terrible that I hadn’t worked harder to find him sooner, if only to offer my condolences for his loss in a more timely manner.
He updated me on our other old roommates and said that one was doing great from what he knew and the other, not so much. He said he had also lost contact to some degree with the others and had had similar thoughts over the years about it but, like all of us, was too busy and time just kept passing by.
So now that we’ve made contact again, I will try to convince him to come back for our 20th reunion in September. If not that, then I will try to get him to visit his mom here in town and we can hook up then. Either way, I feel better.
You see, you don’t meet really good people every day and you don’t make friends with good people every day. And when you do, you should make a better than average effort to make contact, stay in touch, and keep that going.
That after all, is a big part of what life’s supposed to be all about.
(Now having said all of that, I will make a point to post stuff that is MUCH shorter and FAR less serious for the rest of the day).
TTFNMF
What say you?