My Happy Life

My Best Friend

One night in September 1976, I received a phone call informing that Robin Weis, my best friend in the entire world, was dead. His wife Jackie -- the mother of his four children -- was calling to let me know that he’d been driving home that morning when a deer leapt out into the middle of the road. Robin swerved, his car hit a tree, and he died instantly in the crash.

Robin and I hadn’t seen each other for a while but that was normal during our friendship. We could temporarily lose touch and then pick right back up where we left off. It was as if time and distance didn’t matter and honestly, I don’t think they did. So, back in 1976, I just figured we’d eventually reconnect, as we always did. Who knows? When the phone rang that day, I might have even imagined it was him and we were about to make plans to reunite.

Little did I know, I’d be writing about that phone call four decades later.

***

More than twenty years before that tragic event, when I was about 11 years old, I first encountered Robin. It seems he’d done or said something to my sister Helen that I took offense to and felt the need to “defend her honor.” I walked over to where they were yelling at each other, stepped in, and socked Robin on the jaw. It was a cheap shot, and I know he didn’t deserve it. So I grabbed Helen’s hand and we ran all the way home.

Fast forward a year and we had somehow made up and began hanging out with each other all the time. We’d always try to be on the same side for whatever games we were playing and eventually we started our own softball team, the Cherokees. Despite our rocky beginning, there seemed to be something that meshed between us, sort of like “opposites attract.”

Robin was the bold one, the rebel -- always thinking up plans that were not quite illegal but still felt at least slightly wrong. Me, I was shy and practical and kept us in check so we didn’t wind up in jail! Our connection was based on a mutual respect of these differences and we became the best of friends.

I felt like the Robin I knew was hidden to most others. Behind that bold front that made some view him a bad guy, I got to see the wonderful, caring, kind individual, the guy who’d give you the shirt off his back.

When we weren’t playing street games, we’d sit in his hallway and plan our future. This always seemed to involve being some kind of superhero! If I were Batman, he was Robin (of course) and we were going to rid the planet of all the bad guys. The next day, he might reverse it all and be the hero and I’d be his sidekick but I didn't mind it at all. We were partners, buddies, and best friends.