Fractured Friendship

©2019 C. Henry Martens I think it started with the okra.Old friends are a precious commodity. Those who grow closer over the years are blessed. There is no doubt of that. But sometimes life gets in the way of maintaining a friendship, much less cultivating closeness.I hung with an interesting crowd in my early twenties. The first thing that attracted me to them was their sense of humor. In retrospect, it was a “thing” for us to insulate ourselves in a fish bubble containing the gang, where we looked out at the world with superior eyes and made fun of the idiocy of the rest of the world. It was fun, and pretty benign, but the attitude was promulgated on our vision of ourselves as being more intelligent than the rest of the world.Why did we think we were so special? So outside of the average? Even superior, although all of us would have denied the label? Well, we had a core of intellectual people. Most of them were employed as teachers. To me, these people were a form of bling. Hanging with them gave me some amount of pride.Over the years we all split off from the group but more or less kept in touch. Some people disappeared entirely, lost to the vagaries of life, growing older, moving, or acquiring new jobs. A couple of friends took the long, final walk. So there was attrition in the group.But up until yesterday, there were seven of us who had remained faithful in friendship...Continue Reading at our new site - ApocalypseObserver.com!