Old friend

This morning I had a Zoom call with an old friend, old enough that I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned him here yet. Before last weekend, our last communication was in … I think  … 1984, so over forty years ago. The last time we saw each other in person was … now I'm not sure I can remember. I know for sure we got together for a week or so back in 1978 (or not quite fifty years ago). There might have been once more since then, a couple years later, but I can't be certain.

But wait! If I last saw him almost fifty years ago, when the hell did we meet in the first place? Oh, that's easy. We met in the fall of 1970, in fifth grade. I even remember a story about the day.

I'd better give this fellow a name. I'll call him Chris, although I reserve the right to change his name to something else if he becomes important to the story and I think of a better one later. (In real life, his name is not Chris.) At the moment, I have no idea what actor should play him, so this installment of the movie meme will have to wait.

History

Chris joined our class a few weeks after the beginning of school. I don't really know why. So the teacher assigned a student at random—I think it was Gavin—to be his "official friend" and show him around. But during recess, Chris and I started talking, and we took to each other immediately. He started explaining some kind of popular science he had recently been reading: I'm almost certain it was about capybaras. I thought it was fascinating, and doubtless started talking about whatever my enthusiasms were back then. (Fortunately I don't remember.) At one point Gavin actually objected, "Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be showing him around!" Chris replied, "I'll talk to whoever I want to talk to." And pretty much from that first day, he and I were best friends.

Three years later, at the end of seventh grade, my family moved away. Far away. So Chris and I started writing letters. All through eighth grade and high school, we kept up a heavy correspondence. Also we arranged a couple of visits. He came to visit me twice (the second visit was the one in 1978 that I referenced above), and I went to visit him once. We even kept writing each other during university, though less often. For each of us, real life was claiming more and more of our time.

I remember getting a card from him when Wife and I got married, so I must have sent him an announcement. I remember the card from him, but I don't remember writing a letter. After that time, I lost touch with almost everyone I knew. Partly this was because Wife and I were in graduate school and time was scarce. Partly it was because I didn't understand my marriage, and didn't know how to communicate it to anyone I had known before. I had brief, sporadic communications with Schmidt, with Marie, and with Dale—and pretty much none of my other former friends (such as Fillette or Inga). This also meant that during the long years when I wished I had someone to talk to—a problem I finally addressed by starting this blog!—I had no idea how to contact anyone. From time to time I searched for Chris on the Internet, but his real-life name (like mine) is pretty common. So there was no way of finding the right needle in so large a haystack. (Try to find one specific "John Jones" and you'll get the idea.) 

Last week

Anyway, last week I was browsing LinkedIn, and I looked (once again) for Chris. No luck, as usual. Then I looked for a fellow named David, who had been a common friend of our back in the day—and whose last name was a little distinctive. Right away I found someone with the right name living in the right city. The photo looked like the guy I had known, if you added fifty years. And his list of schools went back far enough to include the school we were at together. Perfect. I didn't want to be a pest, so I followed him.

A few days later, David sent me a connection request, which I accepted like a shot. Then a few days later I sent him a text message.

Thank you for the connection invite! I hadn't expected it, but it was most welcome. Also, the photo in your LinkedIn profile is a good one: absolutely unmistakable, even after 50 years. I hope this finds you well.

Best regards,
Hosea (formerly of NNNNN School)

His very first reply was:

Chris says hi. He doesn't do social media.

So that's why I'd never found him on LinkedIn! A couple minutes later, David sent a second text, which appeared (belatedly) to reply to mine:

I recall. I saw your photo and thought it was you so sent it to Chris to make sure I wasn't imagining 

Hope you are well!!

I tried to engage him in conversation a bit longer, but he resisted the bait. On the other hand, he did send me—unasked—Chris's email address.

As an aside, this puzzled me just a little. Does he really assume that the only possible interest I could have in him is to get at Chris? I mean … at some level that might even be true, but not really! I wish I understood his view of the picture. Surely he doesn't see himself as no more than a gateway …! 

So I emailed Chris. I gently asked how he was, gave him a brief (one paragraph) rundown of the last forty years, and tried to open the door to talk.

He replied very soon with the same kind of abbreviated summary, and a proposal that we talk by Zoom.

Today

And today we talked by Zoom, until that gave out after 45 minutes—and then by phone for at least another 35.

It's funny. We both started off by questioning how anyone can restart a conversation after forty years. And then we did exactly that. There wasn't much talk about the past, except incidentally to describe to each other how we both ended up retired in our early sixties. (He seems to have achieved it by earning good money all his professional life and investing prudently. As you know, I managed it more or less by sheer dumb luck.)

Each of us has two sons, and we talked about where they are today, with just enough of the past to make sense of the picture. His boys are a few years older than mine, and involved in different kinds of work. But when I described what Son1 and Son2 are doing, his comments and questions were meaningful and pertinent.

Chris was always a big math and science nerd, so he started talking about the mathematical side of his career. My career didn't require as much math as his on a daily basis, but I talked about how I had started (purely in my imagination) to axiomatize some of my management activities as an algebraic system. 

At one point he asked, "Oh, have you read Proofs and Refutations, by Imre Lakatos?"

I said, "Oh my gosh yes!" And I quoted my favorite little bit from the book, verbatim.

He quoted another related bit, and tied it back to what I had been saying before.

I admitted that actually I hadn't read it since maybe 1981, so my memory of the details was a little foggy. But I understood the point he was trying to make.

It seems like he is spending part of his retirement studying category theory. Along with physics, programming, and reading more science fiction. Hmm. I should ask him which authors he likes these days. (Chris is the one who introduced me to Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, back in the day.)

Finally we started to run out of steam. He had had troubles with the microphone in his computer, so he said he wanted to debug it to understand why. (He had a theory.) And once he got it corrected, he wanted to talk again. So we agreed to talk again after he figured out what was wrong and corrected it.

My biggest fear about the whole conversation was that I would find a way to screw it up. But it seemed to go smoothly, and I'm grateful.