No Regrets

I just got an email from my oldest friend. I've known him since 1979, when we were both vying for first chair bragging rights in the Arkansas High School All-State Choir. Neither of us made first chair, a delicious fact that could not have been lost on Brian what's-his-name, with his soft feathered hair and his proportionately stuffed terrycloth v-neck, who definitely didn't deserve first chair but found a way to steal it anyway. We two were obnoxiously entitled and nostril deep in our egos. As it was, we were too competetive to take much public notice of each other then, but as fate has a way of stirring the lumps together, we ended up as college roomates.

Our friendship was predicated on blind trust, bad habits, despair, and the joys of music, radio, and theatre. We were extroverts, and we jestered for attention in a number of indelicate ways. Without combing the details, we've been in and out of each other's lives for going on 30 years now. To my mother, he was always the miscreant, and to his mother, I was. In truth (bless our mothers' blissful ignorance), we were far worse than any paranoid fiction they might have imagined. We were roommates no fewer than six times, and that's if you don't count couch diving in between. We worked together, road-tripped together, and partied HARD together. We wrote plays (we developed a compulsion for tag-typing dialogue, which actually worked pretty well). We even had a college radio call-in show called Mr. Trivia. We spent a full work week, every week, in the tiny production room at KUCA, cutting and cranking out reel after reel of inspired script comedy. Every Friday night, we would transmit our spewings directly into the airwaves over a small football-field sized area of Conway, Arkansas. We asked questions from a dog-eared trivia book, nervously bantered with our third man (a 9th year senior who had taken us under his wing), and broadcast our recorded comedy skits. We had a few regular listeners, some of which were unfortunate minors. We gave away gift certificates to local restaurants for correctly answered questions, and we merrily slaughtered every rule in the FCC manual. The year of Mr. Trivia was the year I decided to quit my music degree.

During the next couple of decades, our mateship was cemented. I could literally write a giant fat book about everything we did together, and how it has manifested in my successes and failures. I have alternately loved and despised him; no doubt the same is true for him. We now live in different states, and our communication is spotty, but we are still always there for each other. We have both been blessed with truly amazing partners, and have both found our way to our own brand of adulthood. He has remained professionally active in music and theatre, and he just started his new job as Drama instructor for Jacksonville High School back in central Arkansas.

So, cut to this week, when I was included in a mass email from his desk. He recounted with beaming pride that his reader's theater team had won 1st Place in a regional speech competetion. As I read the post, I was immediately transported back to my junior year in high school. I had gotten a late start in the theatre arts, but was lucky enough to attend a school that had a great pool of talent in the faculty and in the student body. I was happily planted in the reader's theater group, only (no doubt) for my ability to project vocally. For those of you who don't know, reader's theater is like choir for drama students. It's a group sport - kinetic, out-loud, loads of laughs, and a great trust builder. Speech competitions are big fun, but are also inherently laden with stress. Most of the stress comes from the debate team, and most of the fun comes from the reader's theater groups. That year, we had a winning team, and a great teacher. So, when my friend recounted that he responded with an involuntary shout as his team was called to the stage, I instantly relived that joy with him. But I also relived all our years of common fears and doubts, and all those insecure, liquor and drug-fueled late night conversations we had about Our Lives and Where We Would End Up. In my eyes, my friend has always had enough talent and vim to make his gifted team's victory seem mundane; even expected. But I am lucky enough to know from whence that joy comes, and I now wish to join my oldest, best friend in a great round "Huzzah!"

I love you, Bob.