Navy Andy

I have this friend from middle/high school named Andy Sand who, back in those days, was a HUGE cutup and a bit wild. Now, as things often turn out with friends from your childhood, Andy and I had lost contact over the years (even in high school, when we started hanging out with different crowds), and it wasn't until about a year and a half ago that we reconnected at Evan's first orchestra reunion holiday party in December of 2007. Now, although I had heard about (and been baffled by) Andy's decision to join the Navy, up until this point I had yet to have talked to him in person about it. To my surprise, Andy had grown to be a much more mature person than I assume any of us had ever imagined he would be, and we quickly became friends again in our adult lives.

Now, every time Andy gets some time off from his intelligence work in Bahrain (he went to Stanford, so there was no way they were going to make him a typical grunt of any sort), he gives me a call when he's in town, and we hang out once or twice during his stay. To my surprise, Andy was in town last week, and we hung out twice before he left. And, to make things even more interesting, after Andy had left, he told me to go pick up some old board game figurines from our middle school years over at his parents' house, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So, I stayed there chatting with them for about an hour, which was actually really nice.

Bottom line, it's always amazing to me how some childhood friendships (oftentimes the ones you least expect) end up turning into great friendships in your adult life years later. I'm glad Andy and I are now hanging out again, and I hope it stays that way for awhile!