07/27/07
I know it may be hard to imagine, but there are those whom The Rambling Man considers worthy of his time, and contrary to popular belief, The Rambling Man does have friends who consider him worthy of theirs as well. While there are not many, and the list dwindles on an almost daily basis, the friends I do have are the kind of people I enjoy being around and whom, I trust, enjoy being around me. I learned a long time ago, after decades of trying in vain to be liked by everyone, that if you are fortunate enough to have just a few people during the course of your life whom you can truly call “friend”, then you are a wealthy person indeed. I am at an age that my ego no longer requires me to be liked by everyone, and for some time now I have been doing everything in my power to prevent just that. While I believe I am fortunate enough to have several good friends, there are three guys in particular who are at the top of the list. There have been times I have wondered why the four of us have gravitated toward friendship with one another. Our ages are not a factor. Two of them are several years younger than I am, and the other is quite a bit older than me. It’s not our financial background because I couldn’t tell you how much any of them make, and I’d be willing to wager none of them knew what I made, back in the long ago days when I actually worked (or should I just say “was employed”?). Our politics aren’t an issue. I don’t consider myself to be a politically opinionated person, and on the rare occasion the subject comes up in conversation, I usually just sit and listen because I know it won’t last long. Religion? Again, we don’t discuss it. From time to time, as it often does when guys get together, the subject of sports will present itself. However, since one of our group is a soccer coach and the other three of us feel that discussing soccer is almost as boring as watching soccer we do what we can to prevent the subject from even being mentioned. Sex? Hell yes we talk about sex. We are guys after all. But, when the subject of sex does arise (so to speak) it almost always involves a funny story or dirty joke. And if we ever do get into details about our sex lives the stories only involve past girlfriends or ex-wives. Current wives and/or girlfriends are not discussed, except to extol their multitude of virtues, and to pay compliments to them on the absolute perfection of everything they ever say or do (by now you have probably guessed that some of the aforementioned wives and/or girlfriends also read the Friday Ramble). Since I have three times as many ex-wives as the other three guys combined, I usually have many more stories to tell on that particular subject (and some of them are even funny).
Since it appears we have so little in common, what is it that has drawn us together? We all met when we were members of a club, and that originally allowed us to get to know one another. But, when the four of us get together there is very little, if any, talk about the club or any of the other people in the club. In fact, we seldom talk about any of the things we have in common. And yet whenever we are together time passes quickly and we are almost always forced to bring the evening to a conclusion long before we are ready for it to end.
The truth is we don’t talk about anything of any major importance. We don’t get into deep discussions of world affairs, the state of the economy, the environment, or the war in Iraq. We see and hear enough about that stuff on a daily basis. We use our time together to escape from our day to day lives, and we just allow ourselves to be guys. We do guy things. By that I don’t mean we belch, fart and scratch our balls. We are far too sophisticated and gentlemanly to do any of those things (in public). By doing “guy things” I mean we act like guys acted long ago before it became politically incorrect for men to be men. All four of us enjoy good cigars, and I do not mean the ones you get at Walgreen’s. We smoke fine, aged tobacco, expensive cigars. In fact, it is because of our love of cigars that we named ourselves the Fraternal United Knightly Order For Fragrant Stogies. But, since that name is too long to use in conversation we usually just use the acronym formed by the initials. That’s right, dear readers, we are known far and wide as the F.U.K.O.F.F.S., and it would be hard to imagine a more apt name for our little group.
Earlier this week we were able to get together for dinner. We try to do this on a monthly basis, but due to our busy schedules it’s not always possible. In an incredible display of decisiveness, which it is a well known scientific fact women are incapable of, we made the decision to meet, what day and date to meet, where to meet, and what time to meet, all in the elapsed time of one and one half minutes. The words, “I don’t care, what do you want to do?” were not uttered. Someone suggested a day and since that day was okay with the rest of us we said okay. Then someone mentioned a time and it was decided. When the subject of place was broached a suggestion was made and the decision making process was finished. I’d like to see four women do that.
For dinner that night one member of our group had a man-sized portion of artery clogging red meat. I, appropriately enough, opted for the chicken POT pie. And the remaining two ordered fish tacos, which then, being the kind of guys we are, gave us the opportunity to comment on how the tacos not only bore a striking resemblance to a certain area of the female anatomy, but that the bouquet of their contents made them seem all the more authentic.
After dinner we, respectfully, retired to an area away from the other diners (we’re guys, not jerks) to enjoy our cigars, drinks and conversation. The subject matter was jumping around as quickly as it always did when someone brought up Mount Rushmore. Now, I am aware that it might seem a bit odd for four macho guys who were drinking hard liquor and smoking stinky old cigars to be discussing a national monument, but the question that was asked piqued our interest and the discussion of the subject lasted the rest of the night. “What if” one guy asked “there was a Rock and Roll Mount Rushmore. Whose four faces would you choose to be carved into the mountain? Who do you feel are the four most influential people in Rock and Roll history?” The discussion was on and the opinions flew. Several names were mentioned. Dylan, Hendrix, Clapton, Jagger, McCartney, Lennon, Berry and others were all brought up and discussed at length (although, I realized during my drive home no one had mentioned the name Presley). The only semi-consensus of opinion was for Bob Dylan. No one else received more than two votes. The discussion continued with points being counter pointed and arguments being argued until the cigars burned themselves out and our glasses were empty. It was time to go, and as usual we hadn’t solved a thing, we hadn’t made any earthshaking revelations, and we were far from finished discussing the subject. But, we had once again accomplished our goal for the evening. We had once again done exactly what we had set out to do when it was decided, in less than a minute and a half, where and when all of this would take place. For no particular reason other than we all like each other we had had another in a long line of enjoyable evenings with good friends. And while I’m glad I have given up on trying to get everyone to like me, I am very thankful those three guys do.