Dear John Olive

Dear John Olive,

I am writing this letter on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of your departure to Florida, which essentially dissolved our friendship. Having not really spoken to you since we left the sixth grade, I thought I would post this open letter. Perhaps in common vanity you will google your own name, and then on the eight page you will find this letter, and thus receive my goodwill.

Up until that pre-pubescent point of departure we had an excellent time together, and this friendship is still one of the more specific things I remember from our youth. Being both shorter boys, you and I had a sort of alliance that helped us survive and thrive among our taller amigos. If I may be so bold, the dash of cleverness that the Lord allowed each of us also cemented this friendship, as we outwitted our adversaries. A couple of boys who understood each other, that's what we were, and played so many different games together, shared so much laughter.

I remember you beginning to play the trombone, and I the drum. Since you left I never hear whether you turned out to be good at the trombone, but I was never particularly a good percussionist. I remember going to your house, which was kind of funky and seems in my memory gigantic. It seems as though it was in the woods, and almost like a tree house...I remember running around it endlessly, and have one memory of looking up to see your grandma looking down on us from the balcony. I always thought your grandma was pretty cool. I know you hated not having your dad around, but I always thought it was cool that your grandma lived with you and your mom...she didn't even seem all that old, and really had a lot of style for a grandma. I think she was quite elegant.

I remember playing out on the old payground at school, before they put all the super safe playground equipment ou there. the old concrete tubes, wooden staircases, and metal monkey bars were quite fine for us, and we ruled it well. Why the heck did we obsessively think there was some sort of treasure under that one concrete pipe? I remember that when we were inside it, there was a crack in the joint, and we could did in the earth between the two sections...but why did we? Perhaps just that there was a place TO dig indicated that there would be treasure beneath it. Regardless, we neevr really found any sort of treasue there, nothing physically tangible, anyways. Imagination, what a resource for games! I remember that you and I played all sorts of character games, where we would role play endless characters. I remember some odd game with Mark Schmidt, the yankee kid from conneticut who was in our class for about a year. whatever happened to that kid, I wonder. I don't really remember enough to write a letter to him, I think. I do remember that we told him that the crumbs on those strawberry shortcake ice cream bars were some sort of jewels, and I rememer he kept a bunch of them. I always think about that when I see one of those bars, even now. I think later today I may buy one and raise it to the northest and toast Mark Schmidt with it. I don't think we were being mean, really, just playing an imaginative game.

I hope this finds you well, old friend. Because there have been so many friends that I've shared life with since the sixth grade, and I know that some of them a re well, but some are not, and that's sad. On occasion some of those friends reappear and the sharing picks up again, but sometimes not and I suppose that's okay. Some friendships are only ours for a time, though some go on as constants for longer. I wish ours could have been the latter, but I'm thankful for what it was. IT was a gift for a time, one that shaped my youth in a quircky sort of way, and I am the better for it. I hope you are too.

Peace,
Steven