Recently, I celebrated 8 years of living in the New York metropolitan area. Back when I made that decision to take the leap of faith, an air of uncertainty lingered on my mind, but I knew that if I didn't take that chance to go for it, I'd regret it for the rest of my life.
With that decision, I got to reconnect with old friends from my college days. When we hang out together (which is rare these days), it's like seeing the United Nations among us. I swear, this is the environment I feel most comfortable with. With my group of pals, you have Marc, a black man who's been a friend of mine for 22 years...Joe, a white man of Irish-Italian descent who I've known for 20 years and of course, me...an Asian of Filipino descent. See what I mean?
However, when we get together, race is the last thing on our minds. Some of the differences that we have with each other usually deal with music. Joe is into hard rock/hair bands, Marc is into pure jazz and I'm into rock/commercial pop/dance music. But the one thing we have in common is the admiration and respect that we have for each other as friends and sometimes when I see things going on throughout the world, I just wish people would take a look at us...perhaps they could learn something and maybe the world would be a much better place for everyone involved. Yes, when one of us is wrong in one of our disagreements, we're men enough to admit our mistakes and move on. Recently, Marc and Joe both celebrated birthdays on the same week and I treated them to their birthday dinner...a ritual that we've shared for the last few years. There we were in the Japanese restaurant in Westchester County, NY and we were yukking it up as usual, talking about different topics, though some of those stories I'd have to refrain from mentioning here merely because the subject matters are a bit "salty", if you get my drift. Ha ha!
Another friend who I've kept in touch with is Pat, my freshman year college roommate. Here we were in a totally new environment, leaving our high school friends behind back in the day, and for whatever reason, we clicked and got along great. He was my roommate for only 2 non-consecutive years, but he's been my friend for over 22 years, longer than anyone else I've ever known. Even after our college life had ended, we still kept in touch and when I moved back to the New York metropolitan area, we still hung out on occasion and for 1 year in the late 1990s, we were roommates again. Recently, I've met up with Pat at bars and have gone to baseball games and concerts with him, just talking about regular shit, sometimes but not always reflecting back on our college days. There are times when we get into these marathon discussions about people that have come and gone into our lives from the old college days, but we'd have to stop at some point or else we'd be the ones closing the bar! If we wanted to, we could write about our college experiences and turn it into a movie. But the one thing I would remember most about my friend Pat is that he told me a story once about when he was dating a girl and she wanted to know from him about all his friends. So he'd describe each and every one of the people that hung out with him. But when he had to describe me, he said, "You can't describe Mel. He's an experience. You just have to be around him to know what he's like". At first, I took that as "what the heck was that? You didn't even describe me at all". But when I look back at that comment he made to his girlfriend at the time, it made a lot of sense and it really was the best compliment anyone had ever given to me.
Recently, I got in touch with another old friend. His name is Mark and yes, another old college pal, but a few years up on me. Ha ha! Anyway, he's of Syrian-Lebanese descent, but again, that didn't matter to me either as I saw him as a great friend and a big brother figure to me when I was a freshman in college. It was the funniest thing...he got a hold of me by calling my parents' house and had to convince them with a few stories about me that he was genuinely an old friend. From there, my folks gave him my number and with that he contacted me. We've had numerous conversations on the phone and through e-mail, though I do owe him a phone call soon. When Mark and I talk on the phone, it's like the old days when we used to joke about other people, all in good fun of course. The weird thing is...we hadn't spoken for over 13 years because our lives had gone in different directions and for that, we lost touch. It was a nice surprise to hear from Mark again...I'm hoping to take a trip to visit him this year so that we can hang out, have some beer, share some stories and laugh it up like we used to.
No, my friends and I don't hang out every day like we used to in college, but when we do get together, it's a truly special time and one that each and every one of us cherishes.
