CLEVELAND, Ohio — I was waiting for my weekly writers' workshop to begin at the South Euclid Library when the phone rang. The caller's name appeared and I couldn't immediately answer.
The person on the phone was John Benander, whose voice I hadn't heard in a decade, and whose career had crossed paths with mine: We both worked at MLB.com in the days before it grew into an Internet giant.
I reprimanded John for not speaking to me for years. Why hadn't he called?
“The phone works both ways,” he retorted.
That's exactly right!
Sure, I could have always just pulled out my iPhone and told Siri to call the guy. I didn't, and I think this would have further tainted my character.
Think about it: how many friends do you have that you have lost touch with? I'm not talking about acquaintances; I'm talking about men and women who hold an important place in your life, whose happiness and success give you as much satisfaction as your own.
I don't know how many there are, but it's more than a handful, and I promise I'll try harder.
Perhaps Dallas was my new start. During the eclipse, I met up with some friends from Seattle. I was planning to meet up with two friends from the Dallas metropolitan area, Calvin Watkins and Jean-Jacques Taylor, for Tex-Mex or brisket, both of whom I hadn't seen in years, again.
I hired Calvin when I was sports editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and worked with him again in Pittsburgh. Calvin has had a rewarding career in journalism, and I am proud of his accomplishments.
The same can be said about Jack, who I became friends with while I was getting my master's degree at Ohio State University — he knows Calvin and they're friends.
Jack is a talented columnist who has taken control of his personal brand. I look back on my life and tell myself that I should have done what he did when I was his age. I missed that chance.
So here we were, three longtime friends trying to make up for lost years. No matter how interesting the conversation or how delicious the food, we couldn't make up for those years in one afternoon. But we tried.
I too realized that I couldn’t get to know John’s life in one phone call – there’s not much he and I could share – but what I did get was to hear the highlights of the decade I spent with him (and his wife) and pray that I could make up for those lost years later.
These moments showed me that I wasn't making enough of an effort to hang on to the friendships that mattered. I was finding it hard to do so for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons make sense. But cost was never the reason that made sense.
Technology should have kept us connected. For a small amount of money, you can be in touch with any friend in the world. A call from Cleveland to South Dallas costs the same as a call from my house to the South Euclid Library. So it would be a lie to blame money for my lackadaisical attitude toward staying connected.
While I can claim these friendships have meaning, I need to prove it, and I share some of the blame for letting them loosen.
Friends like Calvin, Jack and John deserve to be treated better, at least from my perspective on the other end of the phone.
Judge B. Hill I grew up in the Glenville area, where I still live, and I spent more than 25 years in daily journalism, writing and editing for several newspapers, before teaching at Ohio University. I left on May 15, 2019 to write and travel the world, and I enjoy doing both.
