My best friend growing up was Travis Sampson.
When I moved to Salem, Travis was in Mrs. Clendenin’s third-grade class. I don’t remember when we became friends, but it didn’t take long. We both liked sports and played the same things at recess. When you’re in elementary school, that’s all that matters. If you are within proximity to one another, you generally become friends. We had every class together. We sat in the same group at lunch. We played together.
Same was true for junior high. We were on the Northwood basketball team together, and the softball team. One year, we had an 8th grade boys volleyball team. We were both on that, too. Travis grew faster than the rest of us. He could grow a beard before the rest of us. He was almost six feet tall in sixth grade. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t pass Travis up until probably our sophomore year.
By then, we didn’t have as much in common, and we didn’t hang out as often. But he was still in my orbit. We shared a locker one year. We didn’t do all the same extra-curricular activities. Plus, in about eighth grade we stopped hanging out with people based on proximity and started making friends based on affinity. Travis and I didn’t like all the same things. We didn’t make all the same teams. So our circles kind of changed.
But when I look back at my time in Salem, if you were to ask me to pick one person who I considered my best friend, I’d say it was Travis.
We were at the sleepovers in elementary school. I remember playing Super Spike Volleyball on Sega or Nintendo at Mitchell Hamilton’s house. We stayed up all night, the three of us and James Gregory. I didn’t have a video game system at my house so I was the worst player by far.
We played basketball together in seventh and eighth grade. I played on the wing. Travis played down in the post. I tied the single-season assists record for Northwood one game by feeding Travis lob passes over a shorter player. He’d put it in for two points. Coach Ruble took me out when I tied the record, because his son Matt held the record. He was fine with me tying, but he didn’t want me to pass him up.
For a season in high school, Travis and I hung out at lunch. We played hacky sack after we ate and listened to Hector Anchando play his guitar. But in high school we weren’t always close. We got busy. We got distracted. We grew apart, in some ways.
Still, as our high school careers ended, we drifted back together. In the summer after graduation, we found ourselves sitting in lawn chairs on the S curve, in Mr. Jim’s parking lot, talking about what was next and re-living what had happened.
You move away, you go to school, you get married, you have kids. You travel the world and then you settle down. I’ve been to India and Israel, Travis has taught in South Korea and Italy. Now I live in Texas. Travis lives in Rolla. I’m a pastor. Travis is a teacher.
We saw each other at our 10-year reunion almost 10 years ago. We sat at the same table and swapped stories. Then there was another long period where we didn’t speak again.
I was home in August, and I hit Travis up on Facebook and asked him if he had time to get together. We met at the Public House in Rolla. When Travis walked in, he was the same height he was in the sixth grade, but he’d given up on shaving the beard. We talked about old times. We talked about our kids and our jobs and our spouses and our world travels. We just talked, as if no time had passed since we talked last, just like the best kind of friends do. We talked about faith, another thing that bonded us when we were young.
We were two Salem boys talking, with a whole lot more under our belts now, but fundamentally having not changed much. No matter where we went in school or what other circles we ran in, we’ve always ended up back at the same table — a lunch table, a reunion table, or a table at the Public House.
That’s what friends do, I guess. No matter how much time passes in between, they always end up back at the same table.
