“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I don’t know about you, but I learned a long time ago to keep my circle small.
When you’re growing up, it seems like all you want to do is amass as many friends as possible; people who like the same things that you do, learning to like what they like and vice versa. When you’re young, you just want to form relationships and be liked by someone, and they want the same thing from you.
I would say I had more friends roughly half my life ago than I do now, but I don’t consider that a negative because like I said, I reached a point where I learned to keep my circle small. I can count the number of best friends I have on one hand and still have a couple of leftovers, meaning I have three of them. (Do thumbs count as fingers? I forget what the rule of, well, thumb is on that one…)
Good friends are there with you for a good time and some fun conversation, but best friends are there with you for both the good and the bad times as well as the full range of conversation, from tired old jokes to discussions that hold deeper meanings. They’re the people who, as you grow older, you can still be ageless with; bringing up the same interests you’ve had together for years if not decades, but still finding a way to blend in what’s new in each others’ lives.
Personally, I’ve always subscribed to the theory that a good friend will bail you out of jail, but a best friend will help you bury the body. Maybe that one’s a little morbid. (Doesn’t mean it’s not true…)
I happened to meet the three guys who would become my best friends through circumstances that started out as very negative and embarrassing for me. I was held back in Grade 8, so I think it goes without saying that I was dreading that first day of school back in the fall of 1999. I wasn’t going to know any of my new classmates and I was going to be that weirdo who was apparently too dumb to make it on to Grade 9. Well, the first few weeks came and went and I started coming out of my shell after an initial shyness period, and I happened to get to know these two guys named Kyle and Chris.
Flash forward nineteen years later and add Alex into the mix somewhere in Grade 9 (I finally got there!), and those three guys are my best friends to this day. I made other friends after I joined their class, good ones in fact who I spent a lot of time with and made a ton of great memories, but graduating from high school and going in different directions in life has a way of, for lack of a better term, “filtering out” the people in your life and showing you who is going to stick around, no matter the distance or any set of circumstances.
Kyle, Chris and Alex entered my life through circumstances that were out of my control. In the end, failing Grade 8 was probably one of the legitimately best things that could’ve happened to me because I met the guys who’ve become like brothers to me.
Do we see each other as often as we should? Probably not, and that’s something I hope to work on. The funny thing is that I see Kyle more often than Chris and Alex, and yet Kyle is the one who lives over two hours away down in Swift Current, whereas Chris and Alex are just up in Saskatoon. In fact, I just hung out with Kyle last Saturday, which happened to fall on his birthday. You’re welcome for the free supper, buddy!
I can’t imagine a life without my friends, and I like to think – with very limited ego – that my own absence would make their lives a little less full. These are people who’ve seen me at my worst, such as when my dad died in 2013 and all three of them (and Chris’s amazing wife Kristin) showed up in Conquest for Jack’s funeral. When the call ever comes, I hope they know they’re the people who can expect me to be there for them too.
Our friends become so much more than just other people with similar interests and similar character traits. They become people who grow as much as we do, but who can still appreciate a night of joking and acting like teenagers, which is where this whole sordid relationship started, isn’t it guys?
To me, friends become family because family doesn’t have to be blood.
Hey Chris and Alex, drinks on Saturday?
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
