Mind if I crash on your couch?

Memorial day and memories - a combination that's as American as - well, Memorial Day. Something about a three day weekend gets one reflective, I suspect. On your standard-issue two-day weekend, you have just about enough time to catch your breath and get ready to do the week all over again. Three days makes it easy to drift just a little.
I got a phone call from my Manhattan buddy. He had just watched "Running Scared" on DVD - the Billy Crystal/Gregory Hines buddy movie from 1986, not the more recent mess with Paul Walker (or any of the other half-dozen or so films with the same title). He was feeling a little wistful for the "old days" when buddy movies were a little less formulaic, and when we were going out to see those buddy movies together. Because we were buddies. This was the film that introduced me to "clinking" donuts (or anything else that wasn't a glass, for that matter) to make a toast. This was a movie that featured a guy who wore a Cubs jersey and had a Battlezone arcade game in his living room. This was a movie with the line: "One of these days we both have to find women at the same time." This was a movie in which the two main characters want to leave their jobs and move to Key West to open a bar together.
I have a hard time remembering another movie that resonated so soundly with me in my twenties. Now that I'm in my forties, I pine for those days just a little. I have a Nintendo game that simulates Battlezone, and I still wear my Cubs jersey from time to time - but I don't stay up all night trying to remember the name of the Cars' keyboardist (Greg Hawkes). I don't laugh the way I did back then - at least not as hard and as often.
Bottom line: I'm lucky because I still have buddies that think I'm that funny, and I still laugh just as hard at what they've got to tell me. I'm glad because they still think of me sometimes, and when I think of them, I smile.