So after about a two year hiatus I was off to Quakertown to see my long-time friend Darren.  Honestly I'm amazed that we've managed to maintain such a great friendship over the years.  I think it's been a combination of things.  Since I moved away from him right before I turned 7 to live in the Poconos, we've still been able to keep in touch with one another.  After moving it was one week summer exchanges to eachother's homes.  Let me tell you, his family is by far one of the greatest I've ever been so priviledged to know.  Then as we got older we lucked out with the internet boom.  Instant messages and e-mail became our mutual third wheel friend.  But then I moved away to Latrobe, and high school was our main priority.  We still sent the occassion message but our visiting days were over... or so it seemed.  Prior to my Junior year of high school I was again on the war path and heading back to the East side of the state.  Darren was neck deep in his Senior year and looking at schools to develop any and all of his hopes and dreams.  Luckily for us, he chose Lehigh in Bethlehem and I was a mere hour roadtrip away.  So his Freshman year of college I went to visit my friend at a school I would only seldom venture, because Lehigh was beyond my realm of academics.  But our friendship resumed, and there was ping-pong.  And over the following seasons we stayed in contact over AIM, facebook, myspace, and with the random visit and ping-pong match.  But the last I had seen of my friend was my freshman year of college at Kutztown my spring semester.

Until this day.  We had decided to meet at a Staples and from there we would search the area for a diner worth our patronage.  Sure enough, we stumbled upon this awkward exterior shaped place, deemed John's Plain and Fancy Diner.  The name was not decietful whatsoever.  We walked in and were promptly greated to the tune of, "smoking or non?"  After a quick glance to see if our habits had changed, we both claimed non-smoking.  We were led to a mostly empty section of the diner with tables and booths.  We were seated at a booth with a marble mural of old times on the wall.  Then presented with leather-bound menus, filled with more options than a wishbone playbook.  After strolls along burger ave and beef street, we settled on our choice meals, and continued to talk of things to be.  As Darren finished his burger, I asked for a box to take home the rest of my sandwich.  Enevitabally forgotten, twice, at the table as we went to pay and again at the cash register after paying.  As Darren began to make fun of my early onset of alzheimers, he began his route back to Bethlehem, seemingly to forget that I had parked my vehicle back at the Staples he would have surely passed had I not spoken up.  So if you were keeping score (like golf, with the lower number being better) it is Darren 1, me 2.  But really, I forgot a small half of a sandwich.  Darren forgot about me and my car while I was sitting next to him after we met at a location of his choice while still in his car.  I think I win, and with that win, break the tie of our most recent ping-pong duel of 1-1, and take the lead of 2-1.