Friends – what does that really mean to you??

The other day a great friend of mine posted a comment on Facebook.  Here it is.

MY DEFINITION OF A FRIEND...

"Friends" on Facebook is a very loose term. To Facebook, everyone is your friend. I see however that even Facebook recognizes that not everyone is really a friend by creating a "Close Friends" list.

For me a friend is someone that would never intentionally cause you harm or grief. A friend is someone I can enjoy having a conversation with, joking, laughing, sharing, and whom you don't need to take life quite so seriously with.

A true friend is someone that when you are faced with adversity will respect your privacy, reach-out to help, and listen openly without passing judgement while offering advice. A true friend knows when you need a hug, knows how to comfort you, and can be trusted with your most private thoughts.

I want to publicly thank my true friends: Sue, Mark, Dee, Sandy, Velora, Patti, Smitty, and Vickie... Thank you guys for being you. You each have a specialness and a place in my heart.

Now just for some background my buddy and I served together on shore duty in Annapolis Maryland, the Naval Radio Transmitting Facility (NRTF) NSS-9.  He was my boss, work center supervisor it was called in the Navy.  We worked and played and drank together, it was a small base and there was not much to do.  He was a volunteer firefighter at the local fire department.  We both ended up meeting girls at that base, there were the only two that were eligible.  There were others available but they either had an excess of facial hair or were complete and very unpleasant women.  I say that in the most polite way possible.  We were stationed there together in the late eighties and we each met our Brides.  At the time I don’t suspect that either one of us would have still been with those same Girls 20 some years later, but we both still are happily married to the same women.

I say all that to get to the point about friendships I have made over the years when I served in the United States Navy.   I am not going to say that friendships I made before or after are better or worse but the friendships I made when I served are some of the strongest bonds I have.  Rob and Jen and Bride and I had lost touch with each other many years ago.  We often wondered where they were and what they were doing, I am sure that over the years they had the same thoughts.  Anyway, some time back we reconnected, right here in Facebook.  It was like we were still stationed back in Annapolis and before long they were at our home in Jacksonville Florida.  They were on vacation at Disney in Orlando and I was sad we only got to spend part of a day together. 

Now we did not speak for nearly twenty years and we reconnected a couple of years ago on here and he still considers me one of his true friends.  I have the same feelings about him, but sometimes I do not think I do a very good job of expressing myself.  I look back on those times when we hung out together at that little 277 acre peninsula on the Chesapeake Bay called NRTF.  We watched the sun come up over the bay and played a lot of volleyball, first on the beach and then later on a court right up by the barracks.  We cooked out all the time at a little club house not 100 feet from the barracks.  We threw parties out there where we drank all night and listened to music too loud.  We would go to this little shithole bar on the Naval station and drink whiskey until we could barely walk, or at least I could barely walk.  We worked on very important and VERY large systems that provided one way communications to submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. 

He was there the night I drank myself silly while cleaning for a barracks inspection, almost literally silly.  That was when I quit drinking, the skipper of the base made that recommendation as well.  It was not much after that when I met Bride.  They were great times at that base, all made better by my GREAT friend Rob, I love him like and brother and am so happy that after nearly 20 years we were able to reconnect with each other and it was like we picked up as if we were at that little shithole bar the night before.  Hahahahha, I love that guy and over the last several years I have learned to tell my friends that I love them, life is too fucking short not to.  So if you have made it this far in this blog then you must be a friend as well so - I love you and you have a special place in my heart as well.