Peppermints

I've been sending and receiving a lot of email from old friends lately.  Friends who over the years became closer to me than my own brothers and sister.  It's not that I don't enjoy my brothers and sister, I do.  But, I didn't pick them from the crowd of my aquaintances to be special,  they were just always there and remain there today.  I know I can call and they will come running and I am willing to be there for them.  Friends are different.  I picked them and they picked me to be a part of each others lives.

I am fortunate to have several sets of friends.  Some are from grade school and high school, others from college.  These are the people who have known me most of my life and we helped transform each other from the childeren we were to the adults we became.  I discovered first the streets outside, then the town, and later the state with Rod and Danny.  During our childhood and teen years where ever one of us was, the other two were nearby.  Rod met his wife of the last forty five years while visiting Danny and I at the college apartment we shared.  The three of us had some fun times and some very rough times during the sixty years we've been hangin' out together.  I heard from both of them this week. 

Then, there's Ed - Don Edwardo de Frijole.  That's an old joke we share.  Our lives also got tangled up in college.  We were both guitar pickers and when two eighteen year old pickers get together it's the start of a band!  During the war, my generations war, I stayed in school just long enough to escape the draft.  Ed went into the Marines and finished his career  in the left seat of an American Airlines 777.  He and I still get together when we can to pick a tune.  It's usually one that we played many years ago while people were dancing on the floor in front of our bandstand.  Our daily chess moves keep us in touch.

Then came a time when I went through buddies, not friends, and a couple of wives at an alarming rate.  No friends from that era - I can't even go back to that town.  Someone will notice and shoot me. 

Finally there are my friends from New Mexico.  These are the people who chose each other as adults. It was more like a whole horde of friends - impossible to mention names with this bunch because there are just too darned many of them.  We shared common interests, common values, lived through the same times and were molded by the same events.  All of us had been successful, in one way or another, and we were enjoying the fruits of that success.  Don't get me wrong, we did not share the same views molded from the same cookie cutter.  There were lefties and righties, libertarians and even a socialist or two dozen.  What we shared was the ability to listen to another viewpoint, no matter how wrongheaded it sounded, without picking a fight.  I have heard from several of these people this week as well.

When I pop a peppermint into my mouth at first I let it melt and savor it's sweet flavor.  Then, at some point I crush it between my teeth and experience the freshness of mint. The friends in my life remind me of peppermint, only the freshness and sweetness last for years.  Peppermint is to sugar what friends are to people - the most  flavorable  expression.  We need more pepperment in our lives.  We need more peppermint in our soceity.  A lot more.