"Happy Birthday, Dave!"

It had been a miserable date. A football game with a petite blonde from South Carolina I hardly knew. I think somewhere in the sixth or seventh minute of our evening together we both sensed it was going to be a long night. Whatever possessed me, I wondered? Thankfully, in the four hours we were together, there was a football game in the middle of the date. I couldn't wait to escort my southern belle back to the dorm so she could get on with the rest of her life. I'm sure she felt the same for me.

As we said "Good night!" and I watched her vanish up the stairs, I caught--from the corner of my eye--someone sitting there in the dorm lobby. Astonishingly, she was alone. I'll never forget my first impression of her. Sitting there with her legs in the chair, crossed, in a pair of cut off blue jeans was the most beautiful girl. She had just witnessed the hurried end of my cold and impersonal date.

The desire to get the hell away from that dorm as fast as possible suddenly left me. I lingered instead, and in a matter of moments my night of disaster became a night to remember. Me and my new friend, "Carol," went on that fall semester to become known as "the campus couple" by many in dormland. Carol became my first love, but sadly I didn't realize it until Christmas break. The incredible misery I felt being home with friends and family and separated from her was utter, utter torment.

And if I realized how very much in love I was, it was really driven home when excitedly returning to school, I learned that, for Carol, it was over for me. That's when I really got how much I loved this girl.

But if my ensuing misery wasn't bad enough, I learned that Carol was now dating my very best friend! And if that first image of Carol is etched in my head, so is the image of the moment a lifetime friendship was sealed when I went down to my friend's room to confront and "congratulate" him on his new girlfriend, my new ex-girlfriend.

Inside his room, I told Dave that I'd just lost my girl. I noticed Dave's hands roll up into fists. I proceeded, "But I sure as hell don't want to lose my best friend too!" David's fists relaxed.

And that was the beginning of what has turned out to be a lifelong friendship. For I left school the end of that semester. Dave did too, but he continued with Carol, until the distance that separated them spatially, eventually separated them emotionally several months later.

Dave and I lost touch. I did my stint in the army, married, and returned to California. It was on a whim one day that my wife and I went in search of David. Armed only with his old home town as any lead, we drove there, checked phone books and gave up. It had been a nice drive. A nice day.

As we pulled in for gas for our return trip, a sudden impulse found me asking the station attendent if he'd ever heard of my old college chum. "Sure," he said. "He gets his gas here all the time." Apparently, David, lived another hour or so away out on the coast. Our trip was not yet over.

And so it was, we found David. And more remarkable was the fact David ended up living in the apartment above ours overlooking the San Francisco Bay a year or so later. And to seal our bond, we shared one most significant emotion: We both still loved Carol.

Now, many, many years later, we are reuniting with David today. At a big birthday party he's throwing for himself. It's his 60th. This landmark birthday was really last November, but Oregon in November is no time to throw a big outdoor birthday bash. So, David unwittingly picked a better time to celebrate his birthday with all his friends. He chose Saturday, July 22nd as the day he would revel.

Almost 2,000 miles apart, he sent an invitation. And we accepted. After all these years, our common love for a young surfer girl, and experiences shared as old neighbors as well as college flunkouts, how could we not accept?

Besides, the day David arbitrarily picked to celebrate his birthday just happens to be my birthday!