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Randy has been my close friend since 1979. We’ve spent many of those years in nearly daily contact. Other than my family, I’ve seen more of Randy over the course of my life than anybody else.

Randy and I were randomly assigned as roommates our freshman year at Mississippi College. We met in our dorm room. Randy was friendly and outgoing, whereas I was shy and hard to get to know. It was a perfect combination.

As soon as we secured telephone service in our dorm room, Randy was on the phone. He would walk in from class and immediately start calling one girl after another for a short chat. Since it was early in our freshman year, most were girls he knew from high school. Looking back, I would imagine most of these girls were flattered to be getting attention from Randy. Of course, they probably didn’t realize that they were one call in a series.

I was almost deathly afraid to put myself out there with girls. Too much of my self-esteem was on the line, and I dreaded being rejected and what I thought that would confirm about me. I didn’t date in high school at all, didn’t go to any dances or to the prom.

But Randy inspired me to get out of my comfort zone. I managed to call two or three girls on a regular basis, girls who I saw as friends rather than crushes. After a few conversations, they would know to expect my calls, so it became a lot easier. I would continue to struggle putting myself on the line with girls. But Randy pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and talk with girls one-on-one, practice I desperately needed.

The only fly in the ointment was that Randy wanted me to put him on the phone during my calls. Pretty soon he was calling my two or three girls in addition to the girls on his list! I got upset (jealous?) and he stopped calling them. Later I found out that one of these girls got upset with me because she was really enjoying Randy’s attention.

Randy introduced me to his high school friend Greg. Greg was then a sophomore at Mississippi College. He had discovered a new game called Dungeons and Dragons, and he got a group of friends together to play. Greg took the role of dungeon master; a role he would be doomed to play for the next three years. I didn’t attend that first session, but it was legendary, with Randy playing the role of a thief who very nearly stole everybody else’s treasure. It got everybody hooked.

Randy invited me to the next game, and it was there that I met my primary group of friends at MC. You can read more about them here.

I had very few friends in college that Randy didn’t introduce me to. At times my life in college was desperately lonely, so I can’t imagine what it would have been like had Randy not included me in his social circles. While I still pined for a girlfriend to validate that I was worthy, I at least felt secure with a group of guy friends. I belonged. That probably wouldn’t have happened without Randy.

Randy was actually pretty aggressive in including me. He would burst into our dorm room and loudly announce, “Let’s go!” I would reply “Where?” He said, “Let’s GO!” I said “Where?”  He said “LET’S GO!”

So I went. One evening, I found out the “Where” was to visit our friend Keith in Dallas, six hours away. It was already evening. So Randy and Jim and one other friend I don’t recall now and I drove into the night, surprised Keith with a visit, then drove the rest of the night home. On the way back, we all slept—including Jim (briefly) who was driving the car at the time. This scared the snot out of him and he managed to recruit another of us to drive the rest of the way.

For a few semesters Randy worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia under a co-op program with MC. When we graduated he recruited me to come work there. We stayed at the bachelor civilian quarters on base, then we rented our own apartment off base.

We both got married, Randy to his Cindy and me to my Jamie. We had our weddings on consecutive days so our friends could make one trip for both weddings. Jamie and I stayed in Virginia and Randy and Cindy eventually moved to San Antonio.

In 1989, I took the lead—for once—and invited Randy to something that would change both our lives. I had created a tax software company a few years earlier, and I invited Randy to join our tiny company as Chief Operating Officer, board member, and equity partner.

I was asking Randy to give up a comfortable, steady life where he was concerned with 401(k) contribution matching and raising his credit rating. In its place, I offered uncertainty, risk, adventure, and the opportunity to create something special. He and Cindy had to think about it. He said ‘yes’ shortly thereafter.

Early on, we came to realize that in order to make our electronic tax return filing successful, we needed to offer refund anticipation loans (RALs). H&R Block used to call these “Rapid Refunds.” The bank would loan money to a taxpayer when the tax return was filed, and the taxpayer’s refund would be deposited directly into an account at the bank which would pay off the loan. We would act as the electronic middle-man between the tax preparer, the bank, and the IRS.

So Randy and I got in the car and made a road trip to two big banks: Mellon Bank in Pittsburg and Bank One in Columbus. We were just two guys in a 1978 Toyota Corolla walking in to see senior VPs with little more to offer than a promise to drum up business. It was heady stuff. Amazingly, they were willing to do business with us!

I remember going back to the hotel and sitting in a hot tub with Randy. Our heads were spinning about what was possible. We were full of dreams and possibilities and wondering whether it would all work out as we had planned. It did. We eventually processed billions of dollars of RALs for several major banks.

Randy came on board just prior to Al, another new partner who was a proven marketer. The company grew. And grew. It eventually filed millions of tax returns electronically every year and had hundreds of employees.

Randy, Al, and I would have lunch together most work days. We did all our strategic planning over Chinese food or barbeque or whatever. Amazingly, I only remember us seriously disagreeing twice in over a decade of active management of the company. I consider this to be remarkable.

The three of us were called by some the “Three Amigos” after the movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short. I’ve been told by more than one former employee that when we were there, the company felt like family. After we left, it was more like a corporation.

As his title indicates, Randy took on much of the duties of operating the company. I never felt comfortable doing that, and because of Randy, I didn’t have to. In fact, I didn’t even have a clear sense of how other people saw me. It was a sign of my own insecurities. So Randy often took on the roles that tended to cause conflict.

Randy invited me to invest in a real estate venture he was starting in Pigeon Forge, TN. My involvement in this venture would once again give Randy an opportunity to change my life.

He built several chalets and was doing well booking them. A guy named Eldon from Texas approached him about locating his personal growth workshops at Randy’s chalets. He promised significant occupancy several times per year.

There was only one catch: Randy would be required to attend Eldon’s seminar so he could understand what it was they were doing. Randy attended. Shortly after, Randy took me out to lunch and told me I HAD to attend this amazing seminar.

It was hard to say no to Randy, so Jamie and I both attended. It changed my life. I started to volunteer as a facilitator so I could pass on what I had received. Although it’s been a long time since Eldon went out of business, I still volunteer at a seminar with virtually the same content located in Portland, 15 years after my first experience in Pigeon Forge.

I haven’t seen Randy much in the last decade or so. We touch base infrequently. It’s strange not to have him in my life on a regular basis. I miss him.

The Randy I’ve known is determined, driven, and creative. This made him a perfect business partner and the guy who would push me out of my comfort zone.

He’s great at analysis. He’s never met a spreadsheet he didn’t like.

He dreamed big dreams and then set out to make them happen. He took big risks for the possibility of a big payout. He continued as an entrepreneur long after we sold the company. Even his wife Cindy has become an entrepreneur, opening three gift shops in Pigeon Forge.

He is gregarious, friendly, and outgoing. He makes friends easily and quickly.

Randy, you’ve been instrumental in improving so many aspects of my life: My friends, my self-concept, my business success, my personal growth journey, my leadership abilities, my comfort around others. Even this impressive list doesn’t do justice to what you’ve meant to me. You are the definition of a best friend. I can only hope to give you as much as you’ve given me.

I love you Randy. I don’t know if I’ve ever said the words before. If not, it’s only because I was too much of a wuss.

Robert is my best friend from childhood. He may have been my only true close friend from high school.

My family moved from South Euclid, Ohio to Clinton, Mississippi during the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. Most people would consider that to be a heartbreaking time to move. I guess it was for me too, but for a different reason.

My high school in Ohio was tough and segregated into cliques. Like most high schools, there were the jocks, the bad-asses (we called them BAs), and then there were the pot heads. As I’ve written about before, I was isolated and bullied with woefully deficient social skills. The pot heads were the only natural fit. They would take anybody, so long as you were willing to get high.

So yes, I smoked marijuana through my junior year in high school. I don’t really want my kids to know this about me. So kids, don’t read this part.

The problem with pot head friends is that they don’t really care about each other. There’s no real closeness developed in the haze. My dad encouraged me to make friends in Boy Scouts, but they were all pot heads too.

So when I left the only home I ever remembered to move to Mississippi, nobody said goodbye. I never again contacted anybody from South Euclid. It was a heck of a way to realize how little I was leaving behind.

I met Robert that senior year in Mississippi. It probably was in CYO (a Catholic youth group). I immediately recognized a kindred spirit. We were both huge nerds. By this, I mean we were both very smart and socially awkward. In this sense, he was probably even more of a nerd than I.

Neither of us could put on much of a social mask. That left us at a disadvantage when talking to our peers, but it made us quick friends. We could be genuine and authentic with each other. There was no posing or posturing. There was no reputation to preserve. No topic was off limits. We could always say what was on our minds. We still can.

In Ohio I went to a high school of 2,000-3,000 students. My ACT score was pretty good but nothing unusual. But when I moved to a smaller high school in Mississippi, I suddenly had the second-highest ACT score in my class. Robert had the highest score.

Robert was a National Merit Finalist. I didn’t know what that was until Robert explained it to me. He was obsessed with it. He would get excited about meeting a girl who was a National Merit Finalists or a girl who scored a 1600 on her SAT. I truly believe he found them attractive because they were smart. OK, it helped if they were cute too.

I simply wanted to outscore him on one standardized test. I couldn’t seem to do it. In desperation I started looking for tests where I might be able to outscore him. I finally found one that I could study for, and managed to outscore him. This was definitely a case where the exception proved the rule.

In college a few of my friends took an IQ test. Robert happened to be with us, or maybe I arranged for him to be with us. When we finished, the person who got the lowest score was… Robert. As it turns out, Robert was a very deliberate worker, and he finished only about half the questions before time expired. He still scored an IQ of 118. So for years we mockingly nicknamed him “118.” It was an homage to what he could have scored had he finished the test. Sometime later he finished the test and got a perfect score.

Robert was in both of the groups where I found friends that senior year in high school. CYO was the first. This group meant so much to me that I continued with the group into my freshman year in college, even though it was a high-school group. Ultimately I turned 19 and aged out.

The other group was my high school drama department. The teacher in charge of the drama club was Mrs. Whitlock. She was also in charge of the debate club. I was on the drama side. Robert was on both the drama and debate sides. He introduced me to the debaters in the group. (Aside: They always competed for state-wide championships.)

So Robert helped me to integrate with two groups and introduced me to a third group. That’s more than I was able to accomplish on my own for 17 years in Ohio. I didn’t have to be a pothead to fit in somewhere. Not anymore.

Robert’s siblings became good friends with my siblings and I dated his sister for a brief period.

Robert even indirectly influenced how I got to know my Jamie. Claudia was part of the debate club. So she knew me, at least casually. Then she went to the same college as Jamie and became her friend.

After college, Jamie moved to Jackson (near where I was going to school in Clinton) and rented an apartment. She wanted to celebrate by throwing a house-warming party. But she didn’t know a lot of people in the area. So she asked Claudia to invite people to the party. I was one of Claudia’s invitees. It wasn’t the first time I saw Jamie (that’s a story for another day), but it was a step toward us eventually dating.

After our senior year in Clinton, we left for separate colleges. In stark contrast to the “friends” I grew up with in Ohio, Robert has become a life-long friend. You know the kind. After not seeing each other for years, we can pick things up without skipping a beat, as if our last conversation occurred the day before.

Robert decided to go to medical school (of course). He moved to California, became an ER doctor, married, divorced, married again, and had three beautiful quarter-Japanese children. He was the best man in my wedding. I was the best man in his wedding.

The Japanese connection could have had some influence over my Andrew marrying a Japanese girl. The first time I went to Japan was with Robert’s Japanese mother-in-law and members of her family including Robert his wife. It was a wonderful trip where I got to stay in the family home (rare for a foreigner). It gave me the confidence to return to Japan, which I did several times with my children. They loved it. I can navigate the Tokyo subway system with more confidence than the Atlanta subway system.

In short, it’s hard to overstate the effect Robert had in my life. I finally felt worthy of having a best friend. He opened doors for me. I know I always have somebody I can talk to, even if we don’t talk very often.

We are kindred nerd spirits.

I am Brian’s big brother.

I need to explain why this statement has meaning for me.

Several months ago Brian posted to his Facebook page. It had something to do with the Cleveland Indians. (We grew up in a suburb of Cleveland.) In the post, he mentioned going to games “with my big brother.”

The phrase struck me. It was different than saying “my brother” or “my older brother.” To him, I was his big brother. He reiterated this when I invited him into this project. He wrote, “You were my big brother and I always looked up to you.”

These words caused me to reflect on how I held myself as a big brother. Did I do what I could to protect my little brother? Did I take on the role of big brother? Did I even feel like a big brother to my brother and sister?

I’m not proud of the way I have to answer these questions.

Had I saw myself as a protector, I might have stood up for myself as well. Had I saw myself as someone my siblings looked up to, I might have experienced more pride in myself. Had I treated them with more kindness and attentiveness, I might not have been so self-centered.

One of the things I remember most clearly about my relationship with Brian is that I hit him when I got frustrated with him. It was an open-handed smack, but he would cry and crumple into a heap. I couldn’t understand why something that didn’t physically hurt much would always make him do this. I never realized that it was the psychic pain, not the physical pain that was most hurtful.

He would continue to cry until Mom or Dad noticed. I thought this was really why he cried—to get me in trouble. OK, there’s probably some truth to that, just not the whole truth. I remember one time, Mom and Dad weren’t home, so he lay in the front yard where I hit him and cried and cried until they came home. I watched him through the window from inside the house and fretted for probably an hour.

This isn’t the way I saw myself as a child when I started this project. As a bully. A bully? Me? I saw myself as a loner and a victim. I was bullied myself. In the sixth grade I was peed on in the boys’ bathroom. In the eighth grade I was cornered by my bully at wood shop with some sort of woodworking tool. In desperation, I lunged at him. He neatly sidestepped me. He responded by ordering me to meet him after school so we could fight. I was terrified. But I showed up and refused to throw the first punch. He said I wasn’t worth it and walked away.

So it’s hard to imagine myself as a bully. I don’t think I bullied out of a sense of meanness. (Brian was kind in saying that the bullying didn’t define our relationship.) But after writing both Sandy and Brian’s letters, I realize I often lost control and lashed out physically when I got angry. I wrote in Sandy’s letter that I felt angry for most of my teen years, and didn’t know where the anger was coming from. I couldn’t take my anger out against who I was angry at, so I took it out against the people who would let me get away with it.

There’s a saying in 12-step groups that goes like this: “Hurt people hurt people.” And I was hurting. I had a terrible self-concept. I don’t know if I could have believed that my little brother looked up to me, that I had qualities worth looking up to.

This doesn’t excuse what I did, it merely explains it. Brian, I apologize for not acting like a big brother. Thank you for seeing me as a big brother anyway.

As for me, I do feel worthy after many long years of personal growth. It’s been hard work. I have to remind myself that I spent the first four decades of my life beating myself up. When placed in this perspective, I’ve made amazing progress in the last 15 years.

Looking back, I do see that Brian did look up to me, because he got involved in many of the things I did, both good and bad. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Like my brother, I was raised Catholic. And like my brother, I am now agnostic. When Brian and I were teens, our family was selected by the Knights of Columbus as Catholic family of the year for entire state of Mississippi. It’s hard to question one’s faith in this environment.

While I was still a practicing Catholic, I judged Brian for having a civil ceremony instead of getting married in the Church. Being judged is a huge trigger for me, and yet I did it to Brian.

Brian, I’m sorry for my role in making you and Carla feel like outsiders to the family. I have a habit of judging. I picked it up from childhood when Dad judged me. I didn’t like it back then, and it fundamentally changed the way I see myself. I’m working on being less judgmental and promise I’ll continue to do so.

A year ago I started a web site called Healing for Heathens (healingforheathens.com). I have yet to do much with it because my partner in this endeavor took time to finish graduate school. Its audience are those who have been hurt by the judgment and exclusion of people who embrace orthodoxy (literally “right belief”). That includes orthodoxy in all its forms, not just religious. Funny how I’ve ended up championing the cause of people who—like my brother—I used to judge.

As penitent as this letter has ended up being, I don’t speak from the perspective of shame. Not anymore. Instead, I take accountability for what I did. This letter has opened up an unexpected area of self-reflection for me.

Brian and Carla truly love their only child, their son Benny. If love could guarantee a positive outcome, then Benny will have a very happy, successful life. Brian and Carla had him later in life. So Benny’s been a very young cousin to our children; more of a nephew than a playmate. Benny was by far the most excited one at our family Christmas gatherings!

Even as a child, Brian had a free-spiritedness about him; whereas I was more inhibited. I remember we both liked the same girl. He asked her out, while I didn’t tell anybody, not her and not him. Even after they stopped dating, I still didn’t ask her out.

Brian is open-minded and egalitarian. He views issues from a perspective of fairness and kindness.

Brian is sensitive, empathetic and compassionate. He stands up for the weak and oppressed.

I’ve somewhat lost track of Brian over the years, what he’s doing and how he’s doing. I get updates occasionally. It would be nice to have a second chance to be a big brother. Frankly, I’m not sure what a big brother is “supposed” to look like now that we’re adults. But I’m willing to at least be a friend. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from coaching others, it’s that it’s never too late.