Maybe the old neighborhood kids are who we still crave?
Shared geography and accents. All of us unflinchingly behind the hometown ball team. The confidence we got from all being together in a group – a band of brothers and sisters – from the same street or city block. We often went to school together and our parents often worked together.
I am speaking personally, of course, but I think we often have more of an affection for the relationships that we have as youngsters than for some of the ones we make as adults.
Even now, I would rather hang out with the people I have known since junior high than anyone else.
Wherever he goes he surrounds himself with people who remind him in some vague way of those kids who formed his world in Brooklyn, where every son was an immigrant’s son, every dream the pipe dream of an immigrant’s son. In Los Angeles, where so many of his boyhood friends have also landed, he runs with the old crowd. “Hello, fellas,” he says, reaching for a menu. “Happy to see everyone looking so happy.”
-Rich Cohen, Tough Jews
