I always marvel at how the world works. How we draw lines in the sand or speak in absolutes, discovering that either is total folly.
I have some great friends in my life, ones who have remained my friends for 30 years or more, though I’m not always certain why. I have not been the best of friends at times I readily admit. I blame it on the significant other I was with at the time. O.K, that’s somewhat incorrect. It’s been well documented that I am something of a windsock with my significant others, readily mirroring the direction of any current storm of opinion. In short, I have lacked a spine, all because of the need to be liked.
Now, there have always been fair-weather friends in this world. I certainly have had my share. We hit it off like gangbusters, we love each other’s company so much that we’re rarely apart, we will do anything for one another, and then, one day, without notice, the whole thing ends.
That is simplifying things a bit. With fair-weather friends it doesn’t usually end with fisticuffs or the utterance of oaths. Instead, you drift apart ever so slowly. You call each other less and less, you see them on chat on Facebook but don’t bother clicking on their name, and eventually you go on with your separate lives, richer or poorer for the experience.
In addition to my fast friends who see me through thick and thin and fair-weather friends who come and go, I have had a few foul-weather friends. Yes, I know there are those who define a foul-weather friend as someone who is there for you when you’re at your worst.
I define foul-weather friends somewhat differently. For me, foul-weather friends are those who were once going to be ushered into my very small circle of fast friends but are now adrift; the line between us fouled by some unknown force.
My first foul-weather friend is Buckwheat. A silly name for a man, but not if you’re a pirate. He got the name because he was a the only white guy in the recreation center he managed in the Rainier Valley here in Seattle.
We became very close during our years in the Seafair Pirates. Even when we weren’t pirating, we did everything together; we could read each other’s minds like a pair of twins separated at birth.
As with most foul-weather friend relationships, ours came crashing down with betrayal. I still believe he was the force that caused me to leave the non-profit organization I had created, largely because of his own windsock tendencies.
I harbored a grudge about it for many years. Now, that I’ve chanced upon him once again, I found that I was holding a grudge for no reason. He’s no longer his joyful, mischievous self, but rather, a very sullen and serious individual who bears absolutely no resemblance to my once best friend. His best years appear to be behind him, as well as any of the reasons we were ever friends in the first place.
I guess the passage of time does funny things to people. A momentary act that seems unforgivable at one point seems humorous in the intervening years. You move on, realizing that it wasn’t the end of the world after all.
Still, you can’t go back to the fast friends stage because ultimately, your trust was broken and like a relationship with a significant other, trust forms the foundation of a fast friendship.
My other foul-weathered friend actually moved up the food chain to become a wife for a time. In the “choosing your friends” category, this decision has to get a Lifetime Achievement Award for worst one ever.
I still remember the day I made the decision to make her a fast friend. I chose her over my entire life here in Washington State. I was given a choice to stay and never speak to her again or leave right there and then. I replied, and I still can’t believe these words flowed from my mouth, “I can’t ever picture a day when I’m not friends with Michelle.”
For those that know how this whole thing played out, laugh away. There has to be some humor in these columns. Certainly I have a big smile on my face for the dunderheaded decision I made that day to destroy everything I had built over a decade all because I had met a piece of tail I barely knew 3,000 miles away.
Suffice it to say, we don’t speak these days. I guess that “day” arrived. I can picture it now. It’s clear as can be. We were never truly fast friends. I had mistaken a little lust and a case of the hornies for a fast friendship. Sure, we got along great for a time, but there was no foundation to build on; we had nothing in common at all except a little mutual admiration for creativity.
I used to get that admiration thing confused with friendships a lot. The last go-around in this department cured me of that nonsense. What was once a very strong mutual attraction, one where we couldn’t get enough of each other, turned sour, leaving us to drift apart with the tides of time, never to speak again.
I thought I was madly in love. I wasn’t. I probably never was. Even our friendship couldn’t stand the test of time, largely because there really wasn’t one to begin with.
In both cases, I had made the mistake of building a relationship on quicksand, not bedrock. And as the sands shifted, the relationship weakened to the point where neither one of us knew how to repair it. Even if we did, neither wanted to put the work into it because it either wasn’t worth our time or wasn’t worth the effort. We simply moved on, allowing the line to that tied us together to fray and foul even more, until it finally reached the breaking point.
Friends for life is a rarity. I know that now. And I treasure my fast friends more than these wonderful individuals could ever imagine; thanks in large part to those famously foul-weather friends who have drifted away with the passage of time.
In the Emerald City, thankful for a small circle of people willing to watch my back all these years,
– Robb