1979. For Frankie

A guy I grew up with passed away today. We had drifted apart years ago, but social media reconnected us a few years back and it was fun to see that he had grown up to be a kind, fun-loving, knock-around blue collar guy with a passion for the Redskins and the people he loved. He also had a sense of humor, about the cancer that eventually took his life as much as anything.He wasn't the first person from my childhood who has died. He wasn't the closest to me. But when I met him in 1979, and we were 11, he just seemed immortal. It wasn't because he was a star athlete or scholar; he was just a kid in a small town with a Goody comb in his back pocket and a sly grin on a handsome young face. But he was self-possessed in a way I wouldn't be for decades, and he seemed confident, satisfied, and positive. I hope that never wore off.I was, in the infantile ways I could wage it, at war with the world and myself when I was 11; the reasons are varied and unimportant here, for now. He wasn't particularly sympathetic to me at first- at that age I was anything but sympathetic to most of my peers. But then a pretty girl with an impossibly thick West Virginia accent and a golden heart brought us together and helped him understand me. I think he eventually did, and he treated me better than most through the terrible years of middle school.He's gone now. And so is 1979 and the tortured kid I was then. But I miss him more than I expected. And just maybe, I miss a few of those hazy, big-car driven, instant-photo colored days as well.