The Old Codgers Lunch Bunch

It started a couple months ago. Three of us, two grizzled old coots and a younger guy, still wet behind the ears at 55, got together for a Wednesday lunch at a local fast food place. It was great. We ate, talked, ribbed each other and had a good time overall. In fact, it was so enjoyable we decided to make it a weekly routine. We've met every Wednesday since.

Our conversations run from writing (we're all part of the Conway Creative Writers group,) to our assorted infirmaties and the medications we take to counter them to, of course, politics. I think we're commendably open about everything but politics, not being sure what the other guys think about specific political issues. Turns out though, we're all conservatives at heart and when we cut out the little differences we all want about the same thing (for Nancy Pelosy and Harry Reid to be gone.) So we talk openly, rib each other unmercifully and have a fine old time. So fine, in fact, that last week we met at 11:00am and didn't get out of there until after 3:00pm! Hey! We lost track of the time. I watched the place fill up and empty twice while we sat there, talking and sipping diet coke. The guy that manages the place came by the table a couple times, asking how things were, but I'll bet he was actually saying, "Lord! Would you guys go home! I need the space." So, just to look like paying customers, we ordered another round of sodas, seconds free of course, just so he'd feel better.

In the final analysis, we don't solve any of the world's big problems. I know, I know, we don't solve any of the little ones either. But what we do though is spend some quality time with good friends, talking about things we enjoy and things that we don't enjoy. When you get right down to it, that's really plenty enough.

I don't know how long we'll keep doing it. Things like schedules and health issues can interfere, nothing we can do about that. Still, I hope and pray we find a way to go on with these hours of fellowship. It important to me and I do believe important to the others. In fact, it seems to me that more folks should do something like this - meet with friends or, more important, family members, to just talk about nothing in particular. For me, at least, it's been like therapy. As they say, "It don't get no better than that."


"A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway."

Fr. Jerome Cummings