Memory Loss, or Huh?

I have a friend who's a very funny guy. We went to different high schools but still knew each other well. We were Jewish kids in Baltimore, circa the mid fifties, and every Jewish kid knew every other Jewish kid, plus the fact that we were, for a time, pledged to the same college fraternity. I didn't get "brotherhood". He did. He wound up in the Peace Corps. I wound up reading poetry in smoky coffeehouses, and, of course, we drifted apart. We rarely see each other and never talk on the phone, but every so often we exchange e-mails, and he's one of those people I know I could joke around with instantly no matter how long it had been. OK. So we're both the same age, and recently got to swapping details on memory loss. I confessed that sometimes my brain seems to be minus sixteen minutes like Nixon's secret tape. Another thing: I access google in order to look something up, then I forget what I wanted to look up. Happens a lot. Very frustrating. But, soldier on. Another friend of mine, long gone, used to say was that his father's best advice was, "It's a good life if you don't weaken." My first friend, the Jewish kid from Baltimore -- you know who you are, Kenny -- said that nowadays when someone asks him what restaurant he ate in or what movie he just saw or where he's going on his vacation, when anyone asks him such things, he says, "How soon do you need to know?"

This was too good not to pass on.

Hold the fort, amigo!

Old friends. Nothin' like 'em.