My Pal Dave

I was talking with an old friend, Jeff, about one of our mutual buddies from back in the day, a guy named Dave Rubadue. Dave was a good-looking kid who had a unique kind of nutty streak in him. He could make funny but poignant observations concerning the entire world, other times he would make humorous yet often insightful comments aimed at some everyday minutia right in front of us. He had a gift for that kind of thing. I first started hanging out with Dave when we were both just starting the 11th grade, almost forty-five years ago. At that time Dave not only had his driver's license, but he also had his mother's car at his disposal. Among other activities, we cruised around Columbus's north side, stopping if we saw a pick-up basketball game, or a couple of pretty teenage girls on the stroll. On Friday nights we'd sometimes drive to other high schools' football games for purposes of picking-up girls. A few times we were actually successful. This was in the Midwest suburbs about a trillion years ago. So there wasn't any actual sex. About all we did was kiss and nuzzle. We might try to cop a feel, but we were risking a rebuff if we did. Still, after we took the girls to their homes we would compare notes and congratulate each other if we had any success, such as it was. Dave actually met his future wife on one of these escapades.

But make no mistake, Dave and I were true friends. Sometimes we'd talk about personal stuff. Romance, sex, religion on occasion, even our philosophies concerning life, all were discussed one time or another. Dave was a bright kid but a bit restless, whereas I was a lousy student constantly on the verge of a kind of frustrated boredom. Truth is, if it weren't for our friendship, Dave, I, or both of us may have gone down some wayward path. As it was, our chemistry together seemed to put limits on each other's behavior. One time we drove into a drive-in movie theater through the exit. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. The cops showed up, took our names, and then threw us out of the theater. It was relatively harmless, juvenile behavior. Back in those days I was capable of a lot worse. Another time we stole beer out of some guy's garage. That time we escaped without capture. Again, I was capable of considerably more egregious behavior, and so was Dave, but when we were in action together, ironically, there seemed to be limits.

After graduating from high school, Dave went on to Ohio State, which was about five miles down the road from our high school. I never had either the grades or the academic aptitude to go on to college, so I began my career in low-paying menial labor jobs. When in college, Dave spent more time studying than he did when we were in high school, yet we still chummed around. Our stomping grounds merely moved down to the Ohio State campus, and surrounding neighborhoods. We'd play basketball on one of the many outdoors courts in that area, and then go to one of the bars for a postgame beer or two. Then about a year into his college career, Dave landed a part-time job and moved into a campus-area apartment. All we had to do was sit on the sidewalk outside his front door and in short order one college girl or another would wander by, ripe for the one-liner. Of course they usually would just smile and dismiss us, but that was okay, we were still entertaining ourselves. I don't know what I would have done with myself had I not spent those hours with Dave. I don't know what direction I might have gone.

About six months after Dave got his undergraduate degree, he got married to one of the girls we had met five or six years earlier while on one of our "patrols". When he told me he was getting married, I informed him that it would likely be the complete end of the buddy-ish life that we had known for the previous six-plus years. Dave denied it, but I knew better. Deep down, Dave probably knew better too.

I was an usher at his wedding. I saw him about a half dozen times after that. Though he lived within twenty miles, he never called, and when I called him, he was always busy. I eventually quit calling.

I've loosely kept track of him to this day. Dave went on to law school and took a job doing lawyer stuff for a big corporation. Soon thereafter he moved into a new, stylish suburban neighborhood and began raising a couple of kids. I haven't heard his voice or even seen a photo of him in well over three decades.

Anyway, as I said earlier, a few days ago Jeff and I got to talking about our old pal. Mostly we talked about some of the shenanigans that the three of us experienced together. But eventually we brought up Dave's sudden and absolute disappearance following his marriage. As I talked about my friend's departure, my thoughts on it, it all started to make sense. See, when Dave received his college diploma, he opened a new door and at the same time closed an old one. Beyond the new door were the wife, kids, and the suburban lifestyle. I did not have a place there, not even to visit. I couldn't sit in his living room and watch TV with his wife and kids. That wouldn't have been good for anyone. And Dave couldn't very well go out and play basketball, or go to see a porn flick, or even spend an evening fishing and drinking beer with his old chums. Those activities existed back behind the old door. End of an era.

Jeff said that he'd like to meet-up with Dave again just to see how he's doing. But I said that, as for myself, no way. The Dave Rubadue of 2012 might very well be a sixty year-old fuddy-duddy, and I certainly wouldn't want to see that. No, I want to remember the young Dave Rubadue, the friend who could spout out a zany one-liner, a zany one-line that often contained a dash of genuine perception. Yeah, that long-ago Dave who would occasionally get me in a little bit of trouble, and in so doing, quite possibly kept me out of a lot of trouble.