“What’s that? An iPhone 1?” he quipped as I tried to capture a moment between him and his lifetime friend at a reunion committee party with my sad little smashed-screen phone. Click. “Shut up, Dave! Jerk!” I, a 58-year-old woman child, sniped back, with a 10-year-old kid giggle and arm punch.

Then there was the knowing laughter and the look that was only understood among those like us who had had a lifetime of it. The deep all-knowing complex simplicity of a childhood shared in one little world of a small town by the river.