I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was seventeen. Jesus, does anyone?
The film-savvy among you will recognize that as a slight bastardization of Richard Dreyfuss' concluding sentiment as he types those words – with “twelve” replacing “seventeen” – on a now-ancient PC at the end of Stand by Me. But in the summer of that film's release, right before I left Crystal Lake, Illinois, to begin my freshman year at Rock Island's Augustana College, I felt I did indeed have the best friends imaginable … partly because I saw most of them, nearly every day, at the best job imaginable.