2 Nomads Wandering in the Wilderness for 40 Years

Almost 4 decades ago, during the Reagan era, in a kindergarten classroom at Bible Baptist School, in the fall of 1985, I met a kid named Dave.

Dave was a sweet and goofy and endearing kid, the kind of boy you immediately like so much that you want to invite him on a playdate.

(And possibly, if you’re quite lucky, spend the rest of your mortal existence swapping notes with and laughing hysterically with and rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles together and sharing all your happiest and most heartbreaking moments.)

Dave and I and another boy quickly became BFFs. The 3 of us did everything together. We went to school together, we came home from school together in what we called “the cranberry van”, we attended Sunday School together at Bible Baptist Church, we went mini golfing together at the Carlisle Sports Emporium, we had overnighters together at each other’s houses, we were together for every birthday party.

We grew up together.

We figured out puberty together.

We experienced grade-school romantic crushes together — and we were brutally crushed by some of them.

We even dated the same girl once. (Fortunately not at the same time.)

Dave and I were simpatico. We were similar in matters of preference, while different in matters of personality. We both loved following pro sports. We both loved playing sports in the backyard. We both loved Christian rock. We both loved going to youth group.

And we both were enamored of, just to reiterate, the exact same girls. I’m pretty sure I was in love with 80% of the girls Dave dated, not to mention the one who I dated before he did.

Our personalities are quite distinct, but our taste in women?

Nearly identical.

We also both loved being goofballs. Dave made me laugh more times during the first 18 years of my life than anyone else on earth has made me laugh in twice that time — before my wonderfully goofy kids were born at age 36 and took a slight comedic edge over my best friend.

Dave used to do this brilliant thing where he would walk into a classroom filled with desks and “accidentally” trip over one of them, awkwardly falling with exaggerated comic effect, a hilariously bewildered look on his face, ending up sprawled out underneath a pile of chairs. Come to think of it, it was pretty much exactly like Molly Shannon’s Mary Catherine Gallagher character. (But before that sketch was popularized! And Dave didn’t even watch SNL. I guess he was just ahead of his time.)

I laughed so hysterically at this that my gut ached. I’m talking Jim Carrey- and Dick Van Dyke-level physical humor. Dave has always been a comic genius. Entirely committed to the bit. It’s a wonder he never got injured. But he was fearlessly dedicated to one goal at any cost:

Making his best friend belly-laugh.

My teenage years as a die-hard Baptist youth group kid were very, very earnest and solemn in some respects. But Dave made absolutely sure that these years were also very, very silly. And I owe him a lifelong debt of gratitude for that.

Then we got a little older. And for a while at least, a whole lot dumber.

Dave and I and our other friend made some horrendously bad decisions in our early 20s. Especially during year #21, when the 3 of us lived together at 14 Falcon Court. (That was our address, and it’s also what we named our abode.) We were stupid, naive kids who had zero comprehension of alcohol or its effects.

We quickly learned of the effects.

But it took us a lot longer to learn we should avoid incurring them.

6 years in my case, to be exact. I went clean at age 27. Thank the good Lord I stayed alive long enough to wander all the way through the boozy wilderness into the promised (and promising) land of sobriety.

I’d like to say that we helped keep each other alive during those foolish years. But if anything, we enabled each other to endanger our living, breathing status.

Our tenacious friendship remained ever-constant, though. We’ve had each other’s backs from age 5 to age 45, despite every foolish decision we made halfway between.

After all, friendship supersedes even stupidity.

In fact, brotherly love supersedes everything on earth.

*To be continued in a few days, since we’re only up to age 27 so far. And I promise this will only be a 2-part saga, even though I could easily scrawl 12 volumes about my buddy Dave.*