Checking on those Memories

There is a line in a Harry Chapin song which goes something like this:

I like old friends
Better than new friends
‘cause they can see where you are,
And they know where you’ve been.

I have always thought this to be true.

There are old friends, that you can lose contact with for many years; reconnect one day, and pick up like you have never been apart. These are the type of old friends that Harry was singing about.

Then there are the old friends, who became “old friends” instead of current friends, because you chose divergent paths.

I have several such old friends. We live right in the same city, and our universes intersect occasionally, but the connection, which once made us inseparable, no longer exists.

One such man was a very close friend of mine from the time I was 19 until I was 25. We were like brothers. It was one of those relationships where everyone just expected to see him, when they saw me, and vice versa. We worked together, partied together, fished together, worked on cars together, and the list goes on and on.

After I walked away from our shared profession, our friendship waned. Our common interests dwindled. My move, out of town, pretty well finished the relationship, as it had once been known.

Now, every time we meet, my former buddy, immediately plunges into a small segment of our nostalgia. The particular piece he chooses to recall is not a complimentary memory of me. Even with the facts straight, at least as I know them to be, it is not a story which highlights one of my wonderful attributes. With the facts, as he recalls them, it is an insult.

After hearing his rendition of these same three stories, again, recently, I asked him, “Why of the thousands of memories, we made together, have you chosen to recite these every time our paths meet?”

His reply was that he thought they were funny.

The truth is he judges people by their cleanliness. The stories he has chosen to save on his “hard drive” are epics of untidiness. Twenty years after our brother-like closeness, the memories, foremost in his mind, of our relationship and all the adventures we shared, are stories surrounding my lack of neatness.

It makes me wonder what kind of memories I store that are only pieces of the big picture.

I know others do this; store incomplete and inaccurate information, but I seem to think all of my memories are the truth.

Hmmm. There is a lesson here somewhere.