Old friends

Man, getting old sucks.

Recently, an old friend of mine and I finally got in touch with eachother.

Let me step back a moment.

My friend, Rob, is someone I knew WAAAAY back in the day. Like in junior high. I think I may have even knew him back at Wilcox Elementary School, which is now just another abandoned brick building where school funds are being spent to not accomplish anything.

But, back to the topic.

Rob was a year ahead of me in school. Way back when, I was able to fool my simple-minded teachers into thinking that my short attention span and knack for yelling out stupid phrases was actually some form of intelligence. So Rob and I spent much time together, as I ended up in many of his classes. And he was freakin' hi-larious.

I wish I could tell you why. When you are a child, you don't really realize how unfunny the funny stuff is. However, as a child, you don't need to understand anything. You just need to laugh. And we did.

There was this song Rob would sing, which was actually a naughtly little tune from the perspective of a drug dealer trying to get laid. It went "Free fix for a f..." um, a little hazy on what that last word was, sorry...

Rob would just randomly bust out with this song, in his pre-pubescent middle school voice, trying to sound all rough and macho, and then we'd sit there laughing and laughing until, finally, he'd do it again.

Then we'd get in trouble.

The other thing that sticks out is a game we had called "Spell it Like it Sounds." (Here, Mak, is the explanation). In "S.I.L.I.S., " the goal was to take a common word, imagine all the sounds that were a part of it, and try to spell that out. You would start with something like "dog," spelling it D-A-U-G-H-G-G, and then get increasingly more ludicrous until you just didn't make any sense at all to anyone but the other player, who was willing to suspend disbelief because he knew that, soon, it would be your turn to listen to him, and all players were entitled to a laugh.

Anyway, I haven't seen Rob since some time in high school. After he broke free of the surly bonds of Glenhaven Middle School (later Vocational Village, and most recently an arson target), Rob preceded me to Madison High, where he got lost in the crowd before I could catch up. Though we saw eachother around, and were friendly when we did, our glory days had passed.

So, anyway, another old friend of mine, the aforementioned Mak, randomly e-mailed me the other day reminding me that Rob was still alive, that she'd once told me to e-mail him, and gently bugging me to do so again. Instead of ignoring Mak, I decided to get a hold of Rob, and I'm glad I did.

Rob, like me, has aged. Rob, like me, is relatively hairless. See for yourself:



But Rob, like me, seems to have turned out alright. No longer the mindless psychopath of youth, he is actually now an insurance agent, and if you need quality insurance products in the Greater Portland area, you can e-mail him for assistance.

Why am I sharing this all with you? First, because I tend to wax nostalgic, as all three of my readers know. Second, and more important, because my wife just went to a movie, but not before programming our VCR to record those crappy shows Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill, which prevents me from consummating my love with X-Box.

So, here I am, drowning my forlorn X-Box-lessness in Coors Light and writing about Rob.

Rob, it's good to hear from you. Mak, keep in touch. The rest of you,

Catch ya later.