On a crisp fall day, as I was walking away from the dining hall, I heard a voice call my name. I stopped, began to turn, and felt the impact at the same time juice began to flow down my head. An apple had been launched from the hand of my friend. It was probably a Red Delicious, given how cheap and ubiquitous those things are, but it felt like something more substantial. Maybe a Crispin. That’s not really important; the important thing is that it exploded on contact, much to the delight of the gathered audience and with great humiliation to me.
The odd thing is that this event was not an isolated one within that relationship. It had not, in fact, been an isolated event within that day. Why, one could reasonably ask, would one continue to be friends with such a person? My thinking has often varied from “it’s good to have friends with whom you disagree about some things” to “a good friend doesn’t give up on somebody.” These statements may be true, but they don’t seem to bear any relationship to my lingering down range from an apple.
Perhaps when you have known someone for a long time, it is easy to assume that they have remained the same person through the years. Surely some things do stay the same, but most interesting people are changing as time passes. What is hard to accept is that some changes take us on divergent courses. When I choose to take up this, I don’t want to have to put down that. Sooner or later, though, I have to set something aside or I’ll drop the whole load.