On the other end

Thursday evening, as I was speeding (literally speeding – 90 MPH) through a neighboring county, I had a dear friend on the phone to keep me awake.

I asked him if he had his heart set on sleeping in our little college town Sunday night. Before I tell you what he said, a bit of background is required. Like me, my friend is no longer a student at the college and he finds himself spending much time going between our college town, where he still resides full-time and the town he grew up in, where his parents still live – this town also happens to be roughly 45 miles from my hometown. We grew up next door to each other and didn’t even know it. Anyway, he’s between jobs right now (the new one doesn’t start until next Monday) and since he’s a bit older than the traditional student, he’s finding himself very frustrated with his place in life at the moment. On top of his own frustrations, several friends have left our little college town and moved onto arguably bigger and better things. And while we’re making a valiant effort at seeing each other regularly (actually, we’re pretty kick ass at it), our friendship is certainly being stretched past barriers neither of us thought possible or even worth it last January.

Anyway, it is Thursday evening and he’s on the other end of my cell phone and I’m wondering if he’d rather just come visit me than me stick around our little college town for an extra twelve hours past my original plans. (Driving at 5 a.m. two Mondays in a row, while worth it, is definitely wearing on my sleeping habits.)

He did want to stay in our little college town and he was awfully passionate about it. In the interest in keeping the location of this blog a little bit of a mystery, even though my full name is on here if you look hard enough, I’m changing town names to completely random names. This is (more or less) what he said. “Yes, I want to stay in Bainbridge Sunday night. Wakefield isn’t my home. I mean, I grew up there, but Bainbridge is home now. I live there. I live there. I only grew up in Wakefield. It doesn’t even feel like home.”

My friend doesn’t know it, but as I was speeding through the dark, I teared up. You ever have that moment when you connect with one person on that one subject close to your heart so completely, so fully, that you wonder how in the world you aren’t just looking through a mirror at yourself? The tears only came because he was so right and to hear him saying it…well, it was a little bit of perfection in one of the most uncomfortable and trying situations I’ve ever been in my life.