Forever Friends

For the most part, when I form a friendship, I form it for life.

My friends and I may not see each other for a long time. We may not even reach out, through e-mail or phone call, for several years. But when we do get together, we pick up where we left off, as though time has stood still.

Some of my oldest friendships go back to elementary school. There are those who I feel privileged to remain close to, who I feel lucky to call friend, from as far back as the third grade. These are people, who, if they were ever in need, I would drop what I was doing to lend a hand, to offer support.

Recently, a friend of my distant past has returned to my present and, since his return, has occupied a lot of my thoughts. With your indulgence, I thought I would share some of those thoughts.

It was an unlikely friendship: he was two grades ahead of me in school and seemed more mature than those years had lent, and we never hung out together on the school grounds. But we lived a couple of doors away from each other and would spend hours together after school and on weekends, mostly in his basement, where his stereo system played the music that would shape my life.

It was music that brought us together. When I turned 8, my father took me to a record store and let me choose an album for myself. I think he expected me to choose a children's record but I went straight to the New Releases stacks and picked an album that drew my attention.

It was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy.

When my friend, Keith, learned that I had this album, he pulled out his collection of earlier Led Zeppelin releases. There was no going back: I became a full-fledged Zep Head. Keith and I would play these albums over and over again. I practically wore out the grooves of my copy of Houses of the Holy and had to replace it, years later, when the scratches became a distraction.

Keith introduced me to other music: Alice Cooper, Yes, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and so many others. To this day, I credit him with helping me form my music appreciation.

Halfway through grade 6, my family and I moved to the Gatineau Hills and I became separated from my friends in Parkwood Hills. In the two and a half years that we lived just north of Chelsea, I saw Keith and my other friends only a handful of times. And by the time that we moved back to Parkwood Hills, when I began grade 9, these friends had formed bonds with other classmates, and I felt alienated from those with whom I used to know so well.

Those who were my age, who were still in classes with me when I returned, eventually rekindled our relationship. And while Keith and I would still remain friends, the age gap, combined with the different circles in which we lived our daily lives, didn't keep us as close as we had been before the move.

One thing that still held us together was our love of music. I remember one afternoon when I invited Keith to my house and we pulled out my album collection, Keith went through every album I had. When he came to my collection of Peter Gabriel records, he exclaimed, "Good choice! This man is God to me!"

To this day, I still refer to Peter Gabriel as God.

Keith was also happy to find my collection of Ultravox albums, pulling out Quartet and urging me to put it on the turntable. I remember feeling honoured to have earned Keith's approval of my entire album collection.

To this day, when I discover a new artist, I often wonder what Keith would think of him or her, or whether this artist or band would reside in his own collection. Even now, his musical opinion is important to me.

Keith and I lost touch after he graduated from high school and went to university, in Toronto. It wouldn't be until several years later that we would be reunited, and it was because of music.

When I was in my second year of university, I moved into an apartment with a fellow student, Peter. He and I had a mutual love of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and every Saturday he and I would sit in front of the television to watch the newest episode, and afterwards we would discuss the show, how it worked into Star Trek cannon and would make predictions about where a particular storyline would go.

Peter also made a great comparison between the U.S.S. Enterprise of the original series and TNG, and Ottawa's old Museum of Nature (previously called the Museum of Man) and the Museum of Civilization, on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River: the angular original Enterprise and Museum of nature; the curvaceous Enterprise-D and Museum of Civilization. "Where no man has gone before," versus "Where no one has gone before," and Museum of Man versus Museum of Civilization.

Loads more comparisons, but that's another discussion.

Peter also loved my music collection, and I would often arrive at the apartment to find him spinning one of my records. We would spend hours, simply sitting in the living room, in silence, simply enjoying the music.

One day, we started talking about my record collection while I was playing First Base, by Babe Ruth (the band, not the baseball legend), and Peter told me that my musical taste was similar to his best friend's.

"Have you ever heard of the band, Strawbs?" Peter asked.

"Yes," I said, "an old friend loved them but I never got into them. It's probably the only band that he liked and I didn't. His name is Keith."

"Keith?" exclaimed Peter, literally jumping out of his chair. "Keith H—?"

"Yes! How do you..."

"He's my best friend!" Peter immediately picked up the phone and called Keith. When Keith answered the phone, Peter held the receiver close to one of the speakers, then said, "You'll never guess who this album belongs to. I'm sitting with my roommate, listening to his records."

Keith answered correctly. Peter handed the phone to me, and Keith and I chatted as though time had never passed.

A month or so later, Keith returned to Ottawa and came over to Peter's and my apartment for an evening where we played vinyl while catching up. I asked Keith if he wanted me to put on a Led Zeppelin album, to which he responded, "Sure, if you like, though I associate listening to Led Zeppelin with visiting my grandparents: I do it because I feel I have to."

It was the last time that I ever saw my friend. At the end of that school year, Peter moved into an apartment with his girlfriend and my girlfriend—now DW—moved into mine. Peter and I lost touch, and with him, so did Keith and I.

But a few years ago, I received an invitation to connect with Keith through LinkedIn. I accepted the connection and reached out, but I didn't hear back from him. In fact, there was very little activity and almost no information about him from his account profile, so I assumed that he had created his account but never got into the habit of using it.

In truth, I don't really use my LinkedIn account very much, either.

Keith has never left my thoughts. A few years ago, I remembered an accident that I had when I was young, and how Keith had been there to help me. I wrote a blog post about it, remembering how he had remained calm throughout the ordeal, though I was bleeding profusely.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a LinkedIn notification from Keith. He told me that he had been following The Brown Knowser through the automated notifications that I post on that social-media site and that he wanted to reach out to me, providing his e-mail address in the message. I responded immediately, gave him my phone number, and told him to reach out to me any time.

He called about a week later.

The phone call was short, as Keith had another obligation that evening. But we did speak for about a half an hour. I felt like I had blathered on and feared that I'd never hear from him again. But when we spoke to each other, if felt as though time hadn't moved—though, in reality, it had been almost 30 years since we had heard each others' voices.

I look forward to more conversations.

As I said at the start of this post, when I make friends, it's a lifelong commitment.