Funny how life and friends can be sometimes....

I just finished a good two-hour chat with a friend on AIM that I've IMed back and forth with pretty sporadically for the past few years, and haven't seen since Christmas 1999. We grew up together as the best of friends, until I joined the Air Force and he went off to college in Illinois, and then off to work in Wisconsin. We have alot of the same interests, politics, sports, music, and such, but how two best friends can be so different, yet so close is truly amazing.

I'm a secular, uberliberal, northeastern complex having kind of guy without kids and a deep believer in urbanistic politics, and he's a midwestern ultrafundamentalist minister with a wife and two kids who belongs to the Constitution Party. (He finds George W and his cronies to be an insult to Christianity, and is just as anti-war as I am, oddly enough.)

About half of our conversation was about politics, and at no time did either of us get mean or out of hand. It's refreshing to be able to speak with someone of a totally opposite viewpoint when it comes to social issues, and not have it turn into a mudslinging contest.

I have no real reason to post this, other than its nice to be able to chat with old friends you haven't seen in years, but have the fondest memories of my life with.

They remain our friends still.

exchanged letters or phone calls. I was in Boston visiting friends and called him to come and meet us. He came in, sat down, and we started talking like I had seen him last week.

What an amazing feeling.