Friends

When we were in college together, one of my oldest friends and I dated girls in the same dorm. They said they would look out the window and see us coming across the quad, he swaying from side to side as he walked, me bouncing on my toes. They said it was comical.

He greatly expanded my vocabulary and taught me that A-1 sauce is brilliant on french fries. We hung out together, dropped out together, resurrected ourselves separately, lost touch, and finally reconnected a few years ago.

One of my newest friends and I walk together too, or did pre-Covid. He taught me about Asia, both past and present, beginning with my attendance at his defense of his master’s thesis on early trade in China, something he undertook late in life. Such a thing would be way too ambitious for me—I still have test nightmares (see above about dropping out)—but his scholarship introduced me to his deep knowledge of the area and his charming way of imparting it.

So: a much better vocabulary at a young age and an appreciation for the varied uses of A-1 sauce from one friend; knowledge of half the world I knew little about from another. Pretty good bookends for me.

I have other friends I’ve learned from, lots of them, but not many I’ve stuck with. Sometimes that’s just my bad luck. I’ve changed jobs or locations. Sometimes the learning became too tedious.

A friendship is like a good long book. It’s comfortable, you enjoy it, and you learn something every time you pick it up. You need all three elements for it to last.

Good dinner-table repartee can be stimulating, occasionally even exhilarating, especially after a few glasses of wine have fortified your views and loosened your tongue, but it’s not always comfortable for the long term. Indeed, the thrill and tension of it make it a rich emotional diet. It’s a Gran Marnier soufflé: delicious in the moment, but too much trouble to make and too many calories for daily consumption.

I have common ground with these two friends, one old and one new, but we’re not in an echo chamber. They’re curious about why things and people are the way they are. Being curious is pretty much the opposite of being certain.

Sure, we kid around about what morons some people seem to be, especially lately when discussing politics, but they would welcome the opportunity to look into the hearts of those on the other side of any issue. They aren’t afraid of what they might find there.

There’s not a whole lot of looking into hearts going on in broad social and political discourse these days. We’re mostly left to deal in generalities and caricatures.

Friends are the opposite of generalities and caricatures. They are specific and nuanced.

I have no illusion that the way I relate to two friends works on a broader, more anonymous scale. Maybe that’s all there is to it. We learn from and grow with our friends and navigate the rest of the world the way one navigates a mountain trail: watching our footing, alert to danger, enjoying the scenery, but not really anxious to camp out full-time in the wilderness.