Why? You are thinking, "You were great friends, what could be wrong?"
Me, I'm thinking. "What do I remember since we last met?" (BTW, the last time was my visit to D.C. in 2007 or 2008. And we had a really good time in our short amount of time together.)
I needn't have worried. For one thing, my friend and I still look enough like each other that we recognized the other as soon as we were face to face.
For another thing, I approached my buddy from behind and announced my presence by uttering a classic Humphrey Bogart line in a terrible Bogart accent. He turned around out of curiosity and also the mindset of, "Only an idiot who knew that I knew this reference would say this while standing behind me would say this."
He was right. I was and still am that idiot. I have no regrets. We had a great time
For the first thing, we are both burgouning "foodies" and were meeting to check out one of the newest ventures of a former "Top Chef" contestant. (By the way, We the Pizza serves up some seriously good pie, especially if you like flavorful toppings, a crisp crust, and still further demand a pliable and chewy dough. Thin crust or deep dish, I was reminded of Mom's toppings and Dad's crust and in my family, those combinations always equaled tasty pizza. Those of you who feel that pizza isn't right unless it is a droopy piece of breading that disappears under the weight of an ultra-sweet tomato sauce or a gallon of greasy cheese please don't go here!)
But back to our reunion: It was great. Time had passed, we were older, pretended to be wiser, and we were just as good friends as we ever were. I was literally speechless with joy as I walked up on my friend. I wanted to know everything he and his family were up to. You know why? Because I cared. Because I knew that he had done lots in the time since we'd last talked and I knew I needed to know.
Sometimes I wonder what makes a friend a friend. Being there for each other at all time, through thick and thin is one. But I think we always overlook a second part of this- distance and time separate friends, but when we can reconnect in person and gloss over stuff and suddenly find ourselves ravenously catching up with each other, I think you have a good friend.
And by this I mean that each of you answers a question about yourself and then immediately asks the other person about their life. Or you may even ignore questions to find out what our old friend is up to. I put it like this: I am a selfish person. I don't like admitting it but I am. People often like themselves and often we like ourselves too much. But when meeting the best of our old friends we somehow manage to balance our enjoyment of talking about ourselves with wanting to know about their lives. This may sound a bit over dramatic but I don't think it is untrue.
At any rate, I ate some fantastic pizza with a great old friend. During the course of our meal we happily discovered that we are still close friends despite the distance of our lives. We used to talk about movies all the time. This time, we talked about how neither of us goes to movies as much as we once did, and also about how neither of us wants to go to most of the movies we see advertised. Age and taste play a large part in this but we share this. We realize that we've both come from the same place with regards of appreciating cinema (even if we didn't always champion the same movies). I remain in awe of my pal's family and ability to work toward his goals. I have no doubt that he'll be successful. I have no doubt that his wife is successful in her current endeavor. I have no doubt that their child is one helluva tyke and I really want to meet the kid.
What worries me is that I offered much less to him. We did some movie talk and we had a great time with it (for a truly great discussion about "Inception" check out Jim Emerson at http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/ )
But besides movie talk, my offerings were slim. I hope that I'll someday have a much more varied life that that which I see in the movies.
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