Taking the train while losing track.

I took the train to New York this evening with the ostensible purpose of attending a family foundation event. It's a perfectly pleasant event, held where my daughter is in college, but the main reason I'm making the trip is to have a couple of drinks with a friend.

This guy is one of a couple that I've made by playing Rotisserie League baseball all these years. He and I began to develop a friendship beyond the game after 9/11, which affected him very deeply for reasons I cannot recall and am not sure I ever knew. He's the only person in the league that I do not know through other means whom I have seen outside the confines of the draft room, when we pick our players. He's a major baseball fan and we have been to several games together and will see more this season.

I bring this up just because of the difficulty of making new friends as an adult. It seems to be easier to make friends when you're a kid. I'm not sure why that is, since adults certainly understand better what's required for a good friendship. But does better understanding make it easier or harder to form bonds.

Many people look wistfully back at their youth and wished they'd known then what they knew now. Unless it was such that you were the only one in that condition, what good what that do really. If everyone knew then what they knew now, how would anything be different? I mean, I guess that a bunch of teenagers with the wisdom of adults were in high school, I'm sure it would be different. But it seems to me that when people say that they weren't thinking about other people knowing more, just them. This strikes me as nothing more than cheating, wanting an unfair advantage of some sort. The while idea is stalkerish and kind of creepy.

But I digress. Anyway, I am enjoying my friendship with this guy, which is kind of ironic because I used to be pretty good friends with his boss, by total coincidence. That was a friendship that never progressed because I didn't know then what I know now. Well, I guess I knew even then that getting a crush on someone else's girlfriend was wrong. I just didn't know what to do about it until the whole situation collapsed around me. Or maybe i just freaked out and fled. I don't remember, which is probably good because it's still a cringe-inducing event for me, even 35 years later.

But I digress again, which means I'm never getting back on track so I'm going to stop and try again another time, once I remember what it was I was trying to say.