Twelve years ago this evening — more or less: twelve years ago December 31, 1999 was a Friday night, and the corresponding Friday this year is December 30, 2011 — I was in Bettendorf, Iowa with Doug getting ready to celebrate Y2K. It’s a little weird to remember how concerned so many people were about the Imminent Collapse of Civilization, but yes, lots of intelligent, well-reasoned people had those concerns. Doug’s mother had about thirty gallons of drinking water set aside in case a serious crisis ensued.
He and I spent that day enjoying cigars with his father, solving all the world’s problems from our comfortable chairs in the basement. We went out to a shooting range, where I rented a Glock for the first — and only — time in my life. It was a well-used range weapon. The sear broke like a soda cracker on the second round of the magazine, and the next thing I knew my Glock 19 became a Glock 18 firing at twelve hundred rounds per minute. Doug can affirm just how white my face was: that was, is, the greatest moment of stark terror I’ve ever experienced on a shooting range. Of course, it was all over in under a second and a half: by the time I fully recognized what had happened it was all over save for the sound of a fountain of brass falling down around me like a rain of pennies.
We left the range after finishing our ammunition, then returned to his parents’ place. We rang in the Year 2000 by watching Strange Days on DVD, a movie set on December 31, 1999, and ending right at the year 2000.
I look back on that now and it seems so new to me, as if it was only a year or so ago. And yet, look at all that’s gone on since then. We each moved to California, enjoyed the boom and were damned by the bust, returned to the Midwest. I went to graduate school and he got married, he moved to Colorado and I headed out East. There have been jobs taken with optimism and left with the wreckage of cynicism, there have been failed relationships, triumphs, tragedies, all of that.
The more I think about what matters in life, the more I realize there is nothing more precious than a friendship which has aged well. Nothing.
May we all be so blessed as to have well-aged friendships. May those of us who are married be so fortunate as to say we’re married to a friend of many years. May those of us with children be so lucky as to say our children are not just our children but also our friends.
And may we all have a prosperous and joyful year ahead.
Thanks much, y’all. :)