Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Mike's response
I told Mike I'd written about him and my college years. After reading it he wrote back. He said I could post it if I wanted. It took me a while to decide, but I finally figured why not? If nothing else, it demonstrates that I know how to pick good friends.
(Sigh, I just wish they were closer.)

I just read through the College Years. What a great way for me to wind down a great week. Thank you so much for those kind words and expression of our phenomenal friendship. It was interesting to take such an in-depth trip down memory lane through your deep thoughts. I learned so many new things about how you were feeling at the time. I, too, had many concerned thoughts during the dark parts of that time about your well-being. You amazed me with your strength to persevere. Challenges often can lead to opportunities. I have just personally witnessed this over the past few months. For you, the challenges you faced then actually played a major role in the development of our deep friendship. Every contact that we had was well worth any effort as I got so much comfort from us having the purest form of friendship. Your company and dialogue was always good even when you were obviously running low on energy. Of course, we both could run on a lot less back then. I think I would collapse if I ever again tried to regularly converse with a friend until 3 or 4 in the morning and then get up for an 8 am class. As I reflect on this now, we actually have something to be grateful to Don for....the challenges you faced with him yielded a deeper friendship for us; and, of course, contributed to your learning how to pick a better spouse.

As you know, I am not really into the whole blog thing mainly because I usually am not much into computer stuff after work. Your writing is incredible and makes one yearn for more. I still remember the awesome Circle K scrapbook that represented much of your growing artistic and literary talent at that time. I am so proud of you as well and so appreciative to have known you for over two decades. You are welcome to share these comments on your blog should you so desire.

Love always,
Mike

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