THEY ONCE WERE CLOSE FRIENDS
I wonder how this happens.
One of my favorite John Grisham books is one of his lesser known, but still a favorite. “Bleachers.”
In the book Neely Crenshaw, after being away from his hometown for fifteen years, returns. Crenshaw was one of those “high school” wonders. A local football hero. Some say “the best that ever played for legendary coach, Eddie Rake. He had been one of Rake’s Boys.”
Upon his return to his old hometown the first place Crenshaw goes is to the old football field. He makes his way high into the bleachers to sit alone at the field where he made Friday nights come alive for the locals. He sat alone, with his thoughts. He had never played in a game on this field where he lost. Thousands of thoughts begin coming back to him. Not just football but also his first, and probably his only, real love, his old girlfriend, Cameron. There were so many memories, some good some not so good. Off to his right he could see the old scoreboard and next to it were green placards with white lettering of the numbers of Messina, his hometown, players whose numbers had been retired. His number, 19 was among them.
As Crenshaw leaves the bleachers and is making his way along the sidelines to his car in the parking lot, he sees Paul Curry walking towards him. Curry spots Crenshaw and they greet.
“Paul Curry caught forty-seven of the sixty-three touchdown passes Neely threw in their three year career together. Crenshaw to Curry, time and time again,practically unstoppable. They were co-captains.”
Then Grisham says something of the two that probably can be said of thousands of others from their past: “They were close friends, who drifted apart over the years.” Drifted apart.
Close friends who had drifted apart over the years. You ever wonder why this happens. Why someone we were so close to at one time in our lives, who meant so much to us, so much a part of who we were, and then “we drift apart.”
So…still why do we let that happen?
May 5, 2012
Keep on
Larry Adamson