Through all my life, I’ve generally had one good friend at a time. When I was in kindergarten there was my friend Russell; later in grade school it was Scott; still later it was my next-door neighbour Chris; in high school it was my buddy Dean. My first year of college I didn’t really find a new good friend; I hung out with the guys in my dorm wing (Baker Third Floor North forever!) but I wouldn’t say that I was particularly close with any of them.
The first semester of my sophomore year (a decade ago) I had to fulfil Austin College’s physical fitness requirement (it was two-part: take Physical Fitness freshman year and then take some physical fitness class later on); I chose golf, under the theory that it’d be useful professionally and is a solo sport (being hollered at by teammates for not being any good is both no fun whatsoever and my standard experience with team sports).
It turned out that almost all the classes were held off-campus, at a nearby driving and baseball-cage place. It wasn’t more than a mile or two away, but this being Texas when gas was under a dollar (and my clubs were rather heavy…) I hunted down someone to carpool with: a fellow I’d known from my dorm wing freshman year.
Every Monday, Wednesday & Friday (IIRC) morning we’d drive over to the range and discuss girls, beer, politics, beer, science, girls and beer—the standard stuff. Phil had been a member of the 9-hole Bonham Golf & Country Club since high school, so about once a week we’d drive up to Bonham, he’d drop off his dirty clothes at his folk’s house, pick up a fresh homemade pie (or two—sometimes his mother would bake me one too) and we’d head over to play a half-round of golf. It was a good bonding experience.
That was an eventful fall. I was was head over heels over a girl and Phil was getting over his first serious girlfriend and then finding the woman who became his wife. It was the autumn that I competed in a mock male beauty pageant. It was that fall that I started brewing at college: Phil and I (being only 19) figured that it was easier to turn apple juice or wort into cider or beer than to buy the already-fermented stuff. I remember how we threw out two batches because they looked & smelt bad, not realising that fruit wines always go through a period of smelling bad, and that the colour always drains from strawberries and cherries (those would have been incredible fruit ciders). It was the autumn that my pipe collection finally started filling out nicely. I suppose in a way that it was the last fall of my boyhood or the first of my manhood. It was a wonderful semester in a lot of ways.
Phil and I would become very good friends throughout the rest of college; I’d visit his and his girlfriend’s folks with him; he visited Colorado with me one spring break; we were roommates our junior and senior years. His then-girlfriend and now-wife Jess’s parents had a piece of land in southern Oklahoma about an hour from school; every few months a bunch of us would go up there for a weekend to fish, shoot and just chill. Phil was always there for me when I was moping about one thing or another, and I think I was generally there for him when he needed a hand. Friendship is a fine thing.
I’d be lying if I said that Phil and I are as close friends now as we were during those golden years of college (at one point we were as close as brothers). A large component of friendship is shared experience, and as time marches on we each add our own separate experiences to life. Our paths have diverged: where once we were a pair of beer-drinking, girl-chasing, golf-playing, Macintosh-using college students, now Phil is a beer-drinking, married, golf-playing, Mac-using doctor of chemistry and I’m a beer-drinking, girl-chasing, many-hobbied, Linux-using sysadmin. We don’t speak or email nearly as often as we did ten—or seven, or even three—years ago. That’s the way life goes.
As the years have passed and other claims on our time have increased we’ve seen less of one another, but it still generally works out that we get to hang out at least once a year. A few years after graduation Phil even ended up getting a year-long internship in Boulder, about half an hour away from where I was living in Denver. That was a great year: about once a week I’d go up to Boulder and once a week he’d come down to Denver. We’d hit the bars and the breweries and the brewpubs and the concert-halls and just hang out; every few months Jess would visit and it’d be like being in college again. He and Jess throw an amazing Christmas party every year which I’ve managed to make twice now; I crashed at their place when I was in town for our five-year reunion. This summer I saw them both in Chicago and then later on Phil and our mutual buddy Darren visited for a concert and a beer tour of northern Colorado.
Despite the fact that we’ve gone separate ways for much of the past seven-and-a-half years, we still take an interest in each other’s doings: I was there when he called Jass’s dad to ask for her hand; he was there when I had my first house blessed; he’s been there when I’ve needed someone to confide in and I’ve been there when he’s needed a sounding board. If all the money I spent on my four years at AC had brought me nothing more than Phil’s friendship, it’d have been a bargain.
