“At this time, we’d like to welcome customers needing assistance or additional assistance to board.”

That announcement was my least favorite part of traveling alone as a child for various reasons—primarily because of how singled out it made me.

I could feel strangers’ eyes on me as an airline employee walked me to the gate, ensuring I wasn’t lost in transit. I wondered what stories they concocted about a thirteen-year-old traveling alone from Syracuse, NY, to Minneapolis, MN.

The freedom that comes along with a trip alone halfway across the country—with a layover in Detroit—gives a teenager in the throes of puberty a high unlike any other.

Decked out in K-Swiss kicks, baggy Tommy Hilfiger carpenter shorts with a braided belt, a matching Hilfiger tee, a puka shell necklace, an overwhelming amount of Hilfiger cologne, and a Discman clutched in my hand—I did my best to look important. I was oblivious to the fact that each attempt to mask my teenage awkwardness only highlighted it further.

I spent my first seven years in upstate New York, where I met my oldest friend. He lived two blocks away in the small town of Ogdensburg, on the shore of the St. Lawrence River—a river that became our playground.

When I moved to Minnesota, staying in touch with him wasn’t easy. We were learning to read and write then, and long-distance phone calls in the ’90s were more expensive than a plane ticket—or so my parents insisted.

A summer trip became a tradition.

Often, I would fly out with my parents. They would stay for a week and then head back to Minnesota, while I remained in New York, halfway across the country (you’ve gotta love the nineties), for an additional week and then flew home as an unaccompanied minor.

I much preferred the latter since my parents turned into different people when they got within five miles of an airport—and this was pre-9/11.

We would spend our days swimming in the frigid, crystal-clear blue water of the St. Lawrence River until we were too exhausted to fight the current.

We would shove peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into our mouths in wet swimsuits, forming wet spots on the carpet as we rewatched our favorite movies from the limited selection of VHS tapes at camp, with the distant sound of boats coming from the river.

For my Midwestern friends: camp = cabin.

One summer, we watched Forrest Gump at least once a day for two weeks. It turns out that this does little for a person. Well, aside from making them irritating to servers at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. when you suggest their trivia questions aren’t challenging enough by throwing trivia questions back at them.

On rainy days, we played board games whose boxes were disintegrating due to humidity and years of use.

We skipped rocks, perfected ’N Sync dances, roasted marshmallows, and memorized the lyrics to “Summer Girls” by LFO.

As LFO would say, “I think about that summer, and I bug ’cause I miss it.”

As we grew up, he began taking trips to Minnesota.

Impossibly, we both found our footing immediately within each other’s friend groups. These microbursts of time allowed us to be a better version of ourselves, free from the insecurities that plagued us in school with our day-to-day friends.

I felt exotic. Girls giggled when a Minnesota “oh” would come through in words like “boat.” People were interested in me instantly, so the most challenging part of making friends—breaking the ice—was eliminated.

The distance didn’t stop me from crushing on girls from both states, adding hormone-fueled excitement to my trips.

Year after year, we would pack the best summer we could imagine into less than two weeks.

That’s another reason I despised hearing that boarding call at the gate.

It was then that a lump formed in my throat, and tears stung my eyes—another perfect summer vacation had ended.

I began questioning how long our friendship would last as I got older. The question was undoubtedly brought on by jealousy, as solid friendships formed with others over the fifty weeks we weren’t together each year.

“Singing in My Sleep” by Semisonic played through my headphones as I took my seat on the plane. The melody of that song brings me back to that tarmac every time I hear it.

For that, I have my best friend’s mom to thank. She always sent me home with a gift, often hidden in my suitcase. This year, she gave me Feeling Strangely Fine by Semisonic, an album I adore to this day.

I was thumbing through coins in my hand when my seatmate, a white-haired woman who smelled like peppermint, sat down next to me. I smiled and went back to examining a Canadian toonie.

Yes, the two-dollar coin is actually called a “toonie.” Oh, Canada—never change.

“Do you know how many animals are on that coin?” she said, buckling her seat belt.

“One?” I studied the scenery around the polar bear on the back of the coin, thinking I’d find a bird flying in the background.

“Six.” She raised her eyebrows as her red lipstick formed a smirk.

I gave her a skeptical smile back. She held out her hand for the coin.

“Everyone can see the polar bear, but if you turn the coin upside down”—she spun the coin in her hand and covered the bottom half with her thumb—“cover the bear’s body… There. The bear’s legs turn into four seals.”

“That’s pretty cool.” I adjusted in my seat, interested in where the sixth animal would come from.

She held the coin back in her palm and gave it a quarter turn. She picked it up, covering the bear’s head and forelegs with her thumb.

“And the tyrannosaurus rex makes six. Some people think it looks like the T-Rex is eating a seal, and that makes seven, but I’ll leave that up to you.”

She was a gift from the universe. I shudder to think what that plane ride would’ve been like if I’d been left alone to brood in my teenage angst.

We talked to each other most of the flight, and she distracted me from wondering if the next trip would be the one when it didn’t click—if it would be the meeting when we discovered that the ember that kept our friendship going had been extinguished. I would catalog new things I liked or new hobbies I’d developed and wonder if those would be the things that would fracture our friendship.

On the second leg of my trip, it was clear the universe wasn’t done with me. My seatmate turned out to be a twenty-something woman traveling the world on her way to California. She had a worn backpack adorned with patches and keychains. Her chocolate hair was wrapped up in a messy bun. She told me about her globe-trotting adventures in her French accent.

Our conversation began when I showed her the number of animals on the back of a toonie.

A real toonie, for one.

Of course, that trip was not the last good one. The tradition of making sure we see each other at least once a year has continued through middle school, junior high, high school, college, jobs, and kids from halfway across the country.

This year has been hectic with life changes for both of us, so it seemed that meeting wasn’t in the cards.

On a chilly, sun-filled Friday morning in October in Minnesota, I was forcing my wife to watch videos my friend and I had filmed of ourselves and texted to each other earlier that week. She stood in our entryway, confused as she tried to identify the humor in the videos.

We were getting ready to walk out the door to get a coffee as I talked about how much I loved that he and I recorded goofy videos for each other.

Then the doorbell rang.

A man with a beard, camo hat, and Spirit Halloween bag stood on my front deck as my wife flattened herself against the wall to avoid being seen.

I would have been up against the wall nine times out of ten with her, but this looked like nothing more than a delivery—not someone trying to sell me a Kirby vacuum.

I greeted the man, who was distracted by his phone. I regretted opening the door, but he finally looked up, pulled down his fake beard, and revealed a familiar grin.

Not many people can honestly say they have had a friend their entire life.

I can.

He was there when I was born and has remained a constant—a source of laughter and advice.

Some friendships endure because both people work at it, and others just are.

I’ve sat at the end of a dock—listening to the water of the St. Lawrence River flow by, drinking beer and talking until the sun starts to come up—long enough to know our friendship is the latter.

As I watched the hours tick down on the final day of his most recent visit, dreading every passing minute, I tried to reframe the situation.

I always thought of the boarding announcements at the airport as the end of a good time.

I spun that thought around, just like the woman had shown me with the toonie, and looked at it from a new perspective. The announcements did not ask me to board a flight traveling away from a good time; they were taking me to the next one.

So I wait, never wholly rid of the fear that the next meeting will be when things don’t click—until we meet again, and they do.

And all is well.

Cheers.