Once a SPO brother, always a SPO brother.

I'm going to mull over 3 different titles in my head for this one.

"Don't be ashamed of what you've done, be ashamed of what you're doing"
"The gift was in the hour, not in the gift"
"The gift of brotherhood, 20 years later"

So 20 years ago I was in a fraternity in high school. That is probably a full post or three on it's own. But today's story is about this one guy with the initials D.G. So, D.G. and I were friends and he was a bit younger than me. Great guy, lot of fun. The kind of guy that always had a beat up truck and drove it hard, had a pack of smokes and beer. The kind of guy that would stand with you in a fight. . . and probably started more than one. Just your good, redneck kind of small town guy.

I probably haven't laid eyes on D.G. in at least 10 years, and even then just in passing at W-M. Some months ago I ran into his wife and she gave me his digits, but I did something with them and then couldn't really remember who she was - knew she had been related to him, but couldn't for the life of me remember how.

So this week he finds me on F.B. So we exchange a few posts and he tells me he has something from the frat days he wants to give me. So long story short, we exchange some messages, etc. and then today before I leave my hometown we meet up. It's the cover to a scrapbook we made for a contest one year with our national convention. All the pages out of it are gone. So I'm not really sure what to do with the cover. Honestly, I was a little let down by that, I had hoped the whole book would be intact. It was a perfect record of a year long since past. A year of brotherhood, friends, growth, etc. (like I said, a couple of posts on it's own).

But then the most amazing and wonderful thing happened - we stood there in the street in front of my brother's house and talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. In the sun. For an hour. And I found out things about D.G. that I hadn't known (or had just forgotten) in the past 20 plus years. Some old things, some new things, some scary things, some wonderful things.

It's hard to describe, but it's easy to describe, you know? I mean, all the stuff he told me about, that's his. That's not mine to post and blog about. But the experience of him telling, sharing, one on one with me. That's why 24 years ago I pledged that fraternity in that small little home town of mine.

And all these years later, there was an hour when the friendship was as strong as it was then, but this time between two adults. It was a really great hour.

So, what to title the post?