Friendship

Shortly after we moved back to Pennsylvania from California, I received a call from a friend with whom I had not had contact for almost 65 years. When I started school in a two-room schoolhouse, he was in second grade. Over the next six years we got to know each other pretty well, and became good friends.

I moved to a different school when I entered 7^th grade, but again we came in contact when I entered high school. I played saxophone and he played tuba in the high school band. When he graduated in 1945 we went our separate ways, and soon lost track of each other. He became a teacher and I became an accountant.

After he retired he regularly played bridge with my mother-in-law at Luther Acres, the retirement community where they both resided. It was through her that he found out I was back in the area.

After his call Barbara and I began going to places of local interest with him and his wife. Although we didn’t all have the same interests, we meshed very well. The point is that even after all those years the old friendship was quickly rekindled.

Since we have been at Luther Acres, we have met many other folks who have become friends – probably more than we have ever had before, at least at the same time. I recently read somewhere that people change “best” friends every seven years on average. That may be true, but people here just naturally want to be close, and it’s a wonderful feeling; hopefully that feeling will last more than seven years. I think that as friendships get longer, they also get stronger.

Good friendships don’t die easily, and they are one of the most valuable things one can have.