The Difference Between "Friend" And "Family"

My friend "N" and his wife "S" showed up "out of the blue" yesterday, I hadn't seen him since last year, when I ran into them at "Wally World". They were just coming back from camping, and since they were passing by my side of town they decided to stop in.

He and I have known each other our whole lives, well, his whole life anyways. I remember I was about 20 and living in my very first apartment, when from my living room/kitchen/bedroom (it was very small apartment) I heard a noise outside. At the time I had a most cherry 78 firebird, redbird edition, t-tops, the works, sitting out in my driveway. I looked out to see what the noise was, and there were these two kids, no more than 7 years old, that had their bicycle turned upside down and while one was spinning the back tire, the other dropped P-gravel from the driveway onto it, shooting the gravel onto my car. Needless to say, "I was none too pleased", and preceded to run out yelling at the two little rug rats, to chase them away. They ran away and came back several times, to them; this game was great fun, to me; not so much. Finally they left, though I spent the rest of the night watching out the window, to see if the little hellions would return, I never saw them again.

About 12 years later I was in a bar and got to chatting with a fellow that had stopped in to buy some beer to go. He told me "It was his birthday, and he was buying the beer for a party he was having up at his house." I told him "it just so happens to be my birthday as well" (it was.) He invited me up to the party, and I said, "What the hell, but you'll have to give me a ride because I'm on foot." We rode up to his house in his truck, and when I got there and met his family, it turned out that I already knew all of them. They had lived in the same neighborhood where I had grown up.

It ended up being a very good party, we all drank heavily, and had much laughter with old friends whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. When It got late, they invited me to stay the night, since no one was in any condition to drive me home and I wasn't in any condition to walk home. I accepted their offer and slept on the floor. The next day "N" offered to drive me home, and on the way we went down the road that my old apartment was on. I pointed out the place to him, and he asked me "did you own a really nice red car". I told him that "I did", and he busted out laughing. He said "I was one of those little kids that was throwing stones on your car!", so punched him in the arm. We have been friends ever since.

We don't see each other "all the time" like some peoples friendships, but that's the way we have always been. I might not see him for months, or even years, then we will run into each other and hang out for months or years. We do try to get together every year on "our birthday", and have ourselves a little party. I remember one year we set up his band (he's a drummer) in my living room, along with two half stacks, fog machine, and a mirror ball screwed to the ceiling, and tried to see if we could get the cops to come, since we had decided "it's not a real party until the cops show up", but it seemed no matter how much noise we made, we just couldn't get my nice neighbors to call the police.

Yesterday He said he wanted to have our party again this year (we say that every year), some years we do, and some years we don't. I don't know if we will have it again this year, he's married now and has a two-year-old son. I'm just waiting for his son to get old enough so I can teach him how to throw stones with his bike tire, onto dad's car.