I had a visit from a friend this weekend that I thought I’d mention. I have known B for 20+ years since the time I was working at a company in between college periods. After I finished college we worked together in the production-engineering department. We shared some similar interests but we had our differences too. B liked motorbikes, and the Rolling Stones. I was a JW and led quite a different life to that of my friend. It rarely got in the way and we often had great debates... usually over a few beers.
After a couple of years I quit working at the company when I was required to work entirely on military projects. I kept in touch with B periodically. Sometimes more than a year would pass before we made contact even though we lived in the same town. I got married, and was working my way up in the congregation and had little time for worldly friends. I worked for a couple machine tool companies before retraining as a programmer and joining a software company. B. stayed on at the company we had first worked together at for a long time and moved from production engineering to sales. He was eventually laid off and he joined another pneumatics company that was eventually bought by a large US aerospace company.
Six years ago I relocated to the USA and shortly afterwards quit the JW religion. I kept in touch with B through letters and later e-mail. We have gotten together whenever I have visited England and two years ago he visited me here in Minnesota for a long weekend. We had time to catch up on everything that had happened over the last 10 years including my loss of faith in the JWs and the WTS.
The past two weeks B has been visiting various US cities on business and flew up from Texas on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with my family and me. A visit here for B isn’t complete without a trip to a Harley-Davidson dealer to get spares and a trip to Best Buy for cheap CDs. We drank a fair amount of beer and caught up on the events of the last few months. B expects to be back quite frequently and I hope we will get to see each other as often as he visits.
I don’t have as many friends as I once did, I lost quite a few when I moved and after news leaked that I had quit being a witness the letters stopped coming. Lots of people have come in and out of my life but this one friendship has endured. B and I are still quite different, we don’t agree on everything. I don’t know what it is that has made this friendship last. Maybe it has always been a mutual acceptance and non-judgmental attitude. Whatever, it is still good to get together, great to drink some beer and fun trying to put the world in order.
‘Till next time.
Thirdson
'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing'