Friends Past

The other day I was thinking about old friends.

I will admit to having many failings, but the one I probably would most want to change is my penchant for leaving friends behind when I move to the next phase in my life.  I don't keep in touch with anyone from my school days, college, or previous jobs.  I still see some of them, but only because they are family friends.  I have a nice set of friends at work, some of whom I've worked with on a number of projects.  I've been at Sun for a long time, but the current work situation (pending Oracle acquisition, or layoffs as what's left of Sun spirals into oblivion) may change that, and I will probably lose track of some of these folks.  My social friends are remnants of a once-large group we called the Kroo.  My thoughts about that deserves its own entry, or several.

I may get around to writing about my work buddies, but I thought I'd start with earlier times.  Some of this is getting pretty fuzzy, and very likely my recollection is more of a fond reminisce than the actual way things were.  But these are my memories, and who's to say what the reality is?  I'm even going to do this without pulling out the old yearbooks to jog my old memories and feelings.

I've mostly been a loner, and I didn't have what these days is called a "bff" until I got to junior high.  Don't get me wrong, the loner stuff is partially by choice, and I'm fine with it.  It's probably why I don't have a problem living by myself all these years.  It might be why I'm living alone, though.  Alone but not lonely, as they say.

Mark was my best buddy through much of junior high and high school.  We shared the same sense of humor and amused ourselves by making sound effects of our favorite music.  He had an older brother that had the latest Cheech and Chong albums, and weird stuff like The Tubes.  I'd go over to his house and we'd play basketball, or catch / "3 flies up" / "500" with tennis balls, baseballs, whatever.  We got in trouble breaking various neighbors' windows with errant throws.

Bonus for me, one of his next door neighbors was Ana, a year younger than us, that I always thought was cute and nice.  Never did anything about that, though.  Maybe the first in my streak of non-followup.  But that's a different story for a different time.

Mark was into history and sports.  He memorized everything.  Nobody knows who was second in rushing in the NFL in 1954, or who the Vice Presidents were.  But Mark did.  Since I happened to be pretty darn good at math and science, we covered a lot of ground for our school's "Knowledge Bowl" team.  Our biggest hole was with language arts.  (Knowledge Bowl is a takeoff on the old "GE College Bowl" on TV that pitted teams from colleges in a question-and-answer tournament.  It may be called other things, but I'm sure it survives to this day at schools across the country.)  Mark and I went to debate camp together the summer before our senior year, to learn and practice to become the lead debate team for our high school.  We didn't do all that great, partly because of a running dispute I had with the speech teacher / coach.

After I graduated from high school, we went off to different colleges, and never saw each other again.  I heard he became a lawyer in Orange County, and married one of our classmates.  Someone told me he was really sick for a while and finally died, but I don't have any details about that.

My other main friends during high school were Charles, Bill, Joey, and Sev.  One summer Sev and Charles decided they wanted to play tennis, and make the tennis team.  So just about every day that summer, we all met at 1pm at the public courts a couple of blocks from my house to play, play, play into the evening, sometimes until the lights were shut off at 9 or 10pm.  The courts were painted concrete, and summers in San Diego could get really hot-- you'd get the direct sunlight and the heat radiating up from the courts.  Sometimes it felt like my shoes were melting on my feet.  Those were the days...

Charles was tall, black, well-spoken.  He had a presence about him, a leader.  He was our class president-- there was simply no one else in our class that could have been.

Joey was half Filipino, half Mexican.  He was into arty stuff, and mostly hung out with the drama folks.  He brought a different point of view to the group.

Sev, another Filipino, was/is probably the smartest of all of us, in terms of book knowledge.  He was chosen "Most Likely to Succeed".  I don't know if he ever made it big.  He learned Portuguese, partly to be different from everyone that was learning Spanish.

Bill, "the white guy", was something else.  He probably had a photographic memory, but he was lazy.  In some of our classes together, I would take notes and study, but he'd just sit and listen (if he was interested).  Then he'd do as well as me, or even better, at tests.  It was a frustrating.

The reason I mentioned the races/nationalities of these guys is just a way of saying that I've always been pretty color blind when it comes to picking friends.  My dad used to call us "The U.N."  I liked that, and thought that was pretty clever.  Although where I grew up wasn't very rich, or maybe because of that, there were a lot of minorities at school, large populations of Mexicans and Filipinos, sprinklings of others.  How I interacted with someone differed more if it was a boy vs. a girl, than any particular nationality.  Although I had female friends, I wasn't as close to any of them as I was with The U.N.

After a summer of learning tennis on our own, from the ground up, we all tried out for and made the tennis team.  Joey and I mostly played doubles, the others played singles.  We did learn to be fairly respectable, but there also wasn't that much competition for tennis.  At the end of our senior season, I was voted captain-- I got a star for my varsity letter.  Never got the letterman's jacket, though-- even though it was just tennis, I didn't want to be known as a jock.  I was quietly very proud that my teammates thought that much of me, quietly because I was somewhat embarrassed by it.  I didn't like drawing attention to myself.

Charles and Sev went to UCLA, while I "betrayed" them by going to USC.  I think Joey went to UCSD or SDSU, but I don't think Bill went to college.  I saw these guys occasionally during the summers in between, and at separate times Charles and Sev rented a room from me when I was working in San Diego, but I haven't seen any of them since I moved up to the Bay Area 20 years ago.  I helped organize our 10 year reunion, but have not made it to any of the ones after that.

Everyone always thought Charles would become a lawyer or politician, but he got a job as an insurance adjuster after college, and I believe he's still in the insurance biz.  I'm sure he's moved up the corporate ladder.

Sev was writing and self-publishing when I last saw him.  I thought that was a waste of his talent because he wasn't making much money.  But what do I know?  Maybe he was just ahead of his time.

I don't know where Joey or Bill ended up.

Guys, where ever you are, here's to you!  My best wishes and I hope you're doing well.  Go, Class of '77!