OK, we don’t talk politics here, but it’s not even American politics. I just wanted Rosemary to know that I was stunned when Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s leader, resigned. That’s it. Rosemary probably saw it coming. But, I read a couple articles about her resignation because you mentioned her, Rosemary.

Anyways, we had sunny and 70 yesterday, and by Friday it’s going to be in the 30s again. There’s my weekly weather report. It did smell like April out there! What a tease!

I’m currently reading Will Schwalbe’s new book, We Should Not Be Friends, and loving it. Schwalbe is the author of the bestseller, The End of Your Life Book Club in which he talked about the books he and his dying mother read together. Before I mention the subject of We Should Not Be Friends, I’m asking a question. Do you have a friend in your life who is just the most unlikely friend for you? Maybe it changes as we get older, but when we’re young we tend to gravitate to people like us. My college roommate and I should not be friends. She played basketball in high school, was a cheerleader, in the musicals, and is a musician. We have nothing in common, EXCEPT our birthdays are the same day, and she’s only a few inches taller than me. We think the computer that matched up roommates saw our birthdays were April 1, and thought it would be a joke to put us together. We’re still friends forty-six years later. And, a friend once told me that he never saw two people glory in each others’ accomplishments as much as we did.

That’s what We Should Not Be Friends is about. I love Schwalbe’s opening. By the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he had already met everyone he cared to know: the theater people, writers, visual artists and comp lit majors, and various other quirky characters including the handful of students who shared his own major, Latin and Greek. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud, and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL (where he would later serve for six years). Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other’s lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation. 

Will Schwalbe is a few years younger than me, so he hasn’t been friends with Chris Maxey as long as I have with my college roommate. But, there’s something special about friendships with those people who are not just like us. They open up a whole new world. I can’t even tell you how much I’ve learned from my college roommate. She’s a special woman who makes me laugh.

What about you? What are you reading? And, if you feel like it, “Do you have a friend in your life who is just the most unlikely friend for you?”