Writing in the last years of the Roman Republic, the Senator, orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero produced two literary works that I've read a couple of times. The first is De Amicitia, or On Friendship, and the second is De Senectute, or On Old Age.
I first read these works when I was in my thirties, if memory serves. The first I understood immediately; the second, well, that took some time. But the value of friendship is something I've known for a long time.
Cicero, in De Amicitia, wrote that "friendship is only possible between good men." That's doubtless true, because of the level of trust required in a really good friendship. I'm fortunate to have one of those good men as my best friend, who I've known for over half a century. And, yes, that's a long time.
It was 1975, if memory serves, and I was in the 7th grade, in junior high school. The community had a kid's air rifle league, run by the Jaycees, and one day I was hanging out with two friends from my class when an 8th grader approached us. I'd known him since kindergarten, but not well. "Hey, Dave," we all said when he walked up.
He was on the Jaycees air rifle league. He talked to us about joining, and we did, and then began a friendship between the four of us that had us hanging around together so much that when we all moved into high school, the other kids started referring to us as "The Fantastic Four."
We were, as the kids say these days, tight. We encouraged each other when we were sweet on a certain girl. We consoled each other, usually with beer, when that certain girl ended up not being sweet on us. We were best men for each other; I was Dave's best man when he got married, and Dave was my best man when I got married twice. The other two guys, Jon and Scott, similarly traded off.
We grew up, we left school, we all want our ways in the world. I don't hear from the other two as much, but Dave and I always stayed in contact. He isn't much of a one to travel, but every time I was in Iowa visiting family, I always found at least an afternoon where Dave and I would go hang out. We still do. Last week, my wife and I were in Iowa for the Thanksgiving holiday to see our family. And again, as we've been doing for many, many years, Dave and I took an afternoon and hung out. We had lunch, we talked about guns, we visited a couple of local gun shops, and muttered about the problems with young people being on our lawns when those shops had lots and lots of Tacticool but no old Model 12 Winchesters or Belgian Brownings. We told old stories. We remembered the good times and the bad times.
We do this every time I'm in Iowa. And every time, even if those visits are a year apart, we pick right up where we left off, as though we had just hung out a week before, not a year before. And nowadays, our conversations involve a lot of talk about how our grandchildren are doing, and about our various aches and pains of impending old age. This is what the years have wrought, and we take it in good humor, as best friends do. It's another in a long list of things we've been through together.
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In another recent article, I wrote of Dave:
My best friend (outside my family) and I have known each other for over half a century. We grew up together, went to school together. We were each other's best man when we married. I stuck by him while he was fighting with alcoholism, a fight he is still winning. We kept in touch while I was deployed to a war zone. This is a friendship that I value as I do few things.
That's what a best friend looks like.
We go through life, and every person we meet, every person we contact, becomes a part of who we are. We go through life making friends and drifting away from them again. We make friends later in life, and those friends are valuable, too.
But there's no substitute for the friends we've known for over half a century. There's no substitute for a best friend.
I have only a few of these old friends. The other two members of the original Fantastic Four are still friends, and we still all hang out when the opportunity presents. My other old friend is the girl who was actually the high school sweetheart of my senior year; we broke up, promised to stay friends, and then did so, for 45 years next summer. Throughout all that time, we've been friends, we've been there for each other.
Cicero, in De Senectute, wrote "O the apprenticeship of old age!" He wrote as Cato, speaking to the younger generation, and it is, again, an apt statement. Youth is the apprenticeship of old age, and there are no people we should treasure more than the people we shared that apprenticeship with. Most of us have our spouses, and we are lucky to have them. But we're lucky to have best friends, too.
