Notes from the small pond: Friends

Some friends are lifelong friends and others are seasonal. I once got an emotional email from a friend of 8 years calling me out for not being more friendly — I hadn’t been paying enough attention to our friendship due to my unacceptable time commitment to my wife and diaper-clad children.

He’d said:

“You don’t pay as much attention to me as you do to your wife and kids and you don’t Get It because you don’t Get It.”

I got it.

Another Best Friend of mine from college, Tim — a guy I’d literally fought to defend, in 1987, earning a broken wrist, a still-visible scar on my knuckles, a set of hand...