Guy Communication

I just finished a four day weekend in the U.P. for Thanksgiving. I had figured that my good friend Lurch would be up there, too. I hadn’t seen him since early August. However, I knew he’d be hunting a lot, and I wasn’t sure of the best way to contact him, since I didn’t know where he was staying or if his cell phone would get coverage. Because of this, I decided that if he had time and he wanted to do something, he’d call me.  (This strategy had worked before.)

The entire weekend passed and I never heard from him. I really didn’t think much about it. (Taking care of Thanksgiving leftovers can take up an awful lot of time.)

Then came Sunday morning church. After the services, I mingled for a while and was thinking about leaving when Lurch materialized out of nowhere. I explained why I didn’t call him, and that I expected that he would have called me. His reply was that he figured I was going to call him. We looked at each other for a second, and then we both just kind of shrugged. The prevailing attitude turned out to be “Well, there’s always Christmas, or summer, or next Thanksgiving, or whenever.”

That’s guy communication for you. The funny thing is I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that happened again in the future.

Over the years I’ve found that guys don’t really need to see each other or keep up with what’s going on with one another in order to keep their friendship alive, which probably was a major contributing factor in what happened to Lurch and I. You can go years without seeing a good friend, and when you finally do, you pick up right where you left off. It’s very low maintenance. There is no lengthy discussion about everything that’s happened since the last time that you talked. Typically, you can catch up on everything in about thirty seconds.

I can picture what would happen if I didn’t see Lurch for ten years. When we’d finally meet (I’d be completely bald by then), I’d ask him what was new. He would reply, “Not much.” That would be all of our catching up. Then we’d throw some horseshoes and go to Slims for lunch. It wouldn’t matter if one or both of us were married, had kids, had been to prison, or had lived in a rusted out bus in Alaska for five years and hadn’t shaved since. These facts might come up during the horseshoe match, but merely as an afterthought.

Then, after Lurch had won, (he always wins at horseshoes) we’d depart casually, not knowing how many years it would be before we’d meet again.

Of course this ten-year meeting assumes one of us would call the other. I’m thinking the odds of that happening wouldn’t be very good.