A True Friend

A TRUE FRIEND

 

I didn’t feel like writing about any of my relatives. If you knew any of them, you’d know why. Instead I wrote about a dear friend.

 

When it comes to a friend my own age, it’s easy to write about Dick. Who’s Dick, you may ask? We spent four years together in Dental School. We were assigned the same dorm room, remaining roomies until we graduated. If that was not enough, we also spent three weeks of Air Force basic training together and remained close ever since.

 

We not only shared a room, but ate together, dated together, played together – you name it. We were, more or less joined at the hip, mentally at least.

 

Dick was never the neatest guy around. The only things he bought were socks and underwear. He wore the same raincoat (fair weather or foul) with pockets filled with notes he never read, but his hair was always impeccably combed. No one was allowed to touch his hair!

 

Since I was the chief note-taker, we studied for every for every exam together without fail. We asked each other questions from my notes until 11 P.M., at which time we went to the movies. The theater near the school showed only Chinese–language films after 11 (the school is in Boston’s Chinatown). No matter, the plots were the same, the popcorn excellent and the surrounding Chinese viewers always told us when to laugh.

 

 

We’d take are dirty wash to the local laundry (25 cents a bag, neatly folded). One day, after picking up our clean laundry, Dick slipped on some ice and sprawled all over the place, laundry flying in all directions! His comment, while lying on the sidewalk, “safe”!

 

Another time, he dropped a project he had been working on for weeks, down a flight of stairs. His comment this time: “making a comeback”!

 

We would often stand outside the school to have a smoke (he never bought his own – just grubbed mine). We’d show anyone who passed by our “Lark” packs.

 

We continued our close friendship until one day I received a phone call from Dick’s wife. He went into the hospital for a routine operation and never came out!  That was 45 years ago and not a day goes by without thinking about him or saying something he said or whatever. He literally lives on in my mind to this day! Quite a friendship! Quite a guy!