With Friends Like These, Who Needs Family?

The incompetent handling of the Coronavirus pandemic in this nation has prevented many of us from visiting our families this holiday season. It might be a blessing for some. For me, it makes me realize how much I miss my friends.

We don’t go home for the holidays just to see our families. “Home for the holidays” means seeing friends you typically only see during the holidays. Let’s face it, we and most of our childhood friends don’t go home for any other reason.

Research shows we replace half of our friends every seven years, but we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the other half of friends we don’t replace. Those are true pals. They know our true nature, our child’s mind, or as it’s called in Zen, our beginner’s mind. Sure, our parents and siblings might know that nature, but tell me, have you ever been as open and honest with any family member as you have been with friends? Think of all your friends know about you that your family does not. My favorite cousin, Joel, doesn’t even know me as well as most of my friends.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m in trouble, I go to my friends, not my family. When I was locked up for pot possession, I called my friends to bail me out. When I was running from cops, I ran with friends. When I had relationship problems, I went to my friends for comfort. And when I was on the downhill side of a nervous breakdown, I went to my friends to see if they thought I came out crazy or okay.

My best friend, Chad, and I will be going on 30 years of continuous friendship in the fall of 2021. We’ll be 35 years old next year. Chad was in the car that drove me away from jail, and he stuck with me despite my dealings in/of drugs. Meeting him is one of my earliest and fondest memories.

My dad and his dad worked together, so I have my family to thank for bringing us together. Chad’s dad was helping my dad install a sprinkler system. Chad and I must have been getting in their way, because we were sent inside to play a game. We didn’t play just any board game, however. This was Rattlesnake Jake, the most exhilarating game played sitting down. In fact, it was impossible to remain seated. The folks at Goliath games deserve a damn award for designing this one.

Imagine a smiling, orange rattlesnake curled up around a box of gold pieces daring you to take one or two. It’s easy. Just use your little, plastic pickaxe to hook into the conveniently sized and placed holes in the gold pieces to remove them from the box. But it’s just a matter of time before Jake’s head snaps forward and pinches your tiny hand with his plastic teeth. Oh, and Rattlesnake Jake’s rattle will be rattling right up until he attacks. And if you get careless and rush in removing the gold, Jake will punish you for your hastiness. The box has a pressure sensor in the bottom. It was high-quality entertainment for a couple of five-year-olds.

“I’m going for two, Chuck,” is the first thing I remember my friend, Chad, saying. You see, in Rattlesnake Jake, you had to announce you were trying to extract more than one piece of gold during your turn. It made the game terribly exciting, so much so my mother yelled at us for making a racket and shaking her decorative dishes when Jake’s attacks made us jump out of our seats on the floor. Chad had to remind me of this fact, probably because I was so used to my mother squashing my youthful exuberance in the interest of preserving her decorations. It’s why I spent so much time outside as a child.

Chad and I improved upon many games and made the best of many situations. The best improvement to a game we ever made was to ping pong, but it took my friend, Brad, to do that. I’ve known Brad for almost 25 years but only recently reconnected with him. Chad and Brad were my two best friends when we graduated high school. Together, we made a movie to submit as extra credit so our other friend, Paul, would pass our Honors English class. That video is shown in English classes at our high school to this day, and Paul did indeed pass the class. He was often our fourth on the ping pong table.

Ping pong had long been a favorite activity of mine and my friends. Almost all of us had tables. We had ping pong tournaments, with singles and team divisions. My friend, Pat, and I generally won both divisions. He was my best friend through middle school, and he was the only real competition I had on the tables. Because ping pong games between Chad, Brad, and me tended to end rather predictably, we decided to make the game more interesting by adding elements of teamwork and cardio.

Brad’s basement was huge, and in the middle of it was a ping pong table. It made for a perfect place to perfect ping pong. The rules were simple. Start the game with two players on one side and one player on the other. The side with two players always serves to the side with one. Upon serving the ball, the server moves to the other side of the table to join the player returning serve, who leaves for the other side upon returning serve to the third player, who leaves for the opposite side upon returning the ball. These laps continue counterclockwise around the table until someone fails to return the ball. All players count aloud the number of successful returns made and usually collapse in exhaustion upon failing to return the ball.

Instead of smashing winners against each other only to be bored with the predictable results, our version of the game stressed the importance of teamwork. Getting yourself in position to return the ball and setting up your teammates with good shots for them to return were the most important aspects of the game. And our successes and failures were shared equally. Our goal was to improve upon the number of consecutive returns made to each other. But, ultimately, the goal was to have more fun than the typical ping pong game provided, so we succeeded every time we played.

Chad and Brad are the best. They’ve been instrumental in improving my life in 2020. A few days before Christmas, I was in a tough place mentally. I didn’t know what I wanted and couldn’t tell my friend the last time I was truly happy doing something. And when I say “doing something,” I mean not consuming something. Thankfully, my friend was sharpening knives.

When my friend, Chad, sharpens knives, he tends to wax poetically in long text messages that eloquently explain how much he enjoys sharpening knives: taking them apart, cleaning them, sharpening them to perfection, and putting them back together. It wasn’t until that moment I realized sharpening knives was my friend’s way of practicing zazen, the meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition.

While my friend isn’t meditating, he is doing something upon which he focuses all of his mind and energy. Typically, that something is breathing, but I don’t think it has to be. Suddenly, I realized I needed some version of “sharpening knives” in my life: something I can do simply to do it with all of my energy and focus. Then I realized the last time I had “sharpening knives” in my life, it was when I lifted weights.

I used to be quite the gym rat. I put on 30 pounds of muscle in six months after graduating high school. My classmates were impressed and hardly recognized me. While that made me feel good, nothing really compared to the joy of safely and successfully lifting something heavy with others who share your interest. I realized it wasn’t the result I was after in the gym, it was the effort and environment. I enjoyed exerting the effort with others exerting similar efforts, and I miss doing so. Before I knew it, my friend had helped me “build my steps” to some semblance of happiness — my “Stairway to Heaven” if you will. Our Honors English teacher loves that song.

“You don’t always need a reason to do,” says my friend, Chad. “I spent [a] day in the spring fixing this drawer that I think was somebody’s first woodworking project. I gave myself a limitation that I couldn’t go in the house anymore, so I had to do it with a few tools I brought out and whatever was in the shed. I look back fondly. We’re all fucking off until we kick the bucket, might as well try to chase happiness some.”

My friends have helped me improve my life like we once improved games. Is it because they were the two smartest kids in the state when we were in high school? No. It’s because they know me better than I know myself sometimes. We all lose sight of who we are at times. Your childhood friends are legends on maps for finding yourself. There are no better legends than Chad and Brad.