I didn’t meet my best friend at a church. We didn’t start a band or write songs that became instant classics. Nor did we become internationally-known cultural touchstones of hip, insouciant intelligence and rebellion. No, Mike and I met in seventh grade gym and went on to spend our high school and college years in a perpetual two-man huddle in the back of a classroom, scrawling obscene cartoons on our “notes.” We became known as the guys who’d mention diarrhea and Michael McDonald in a conversation about what we should have for dinner. Lennon and McCartney we weren’t, but for our chosen art form our minds resonated together, amplifying ideas, no matter how horrible, with at least a small fraction of the intensity that must’ve shuttled back and forth between John and Paul when things were still good.

No doubt that collusion contributed to the dilemma we found ourselves in during the spring semester of our freshman year in college. Both of us were English majors who weren’t particularly adept at science or mathematics, and we were wary of our liberal arts program’s rule that we take at least six hours of science plus a lab. Someone assured us that if we’d taken Evolution, Ecology, and Diversity the previous semester (as we had) that Bio-Chemistry would be “a snap.” We signed up, ignoring the fact that the total amount of work we’d put into the Evolution class was an ad-libbed parody of Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant.”

It didn’t take long to realize we were in over our heads with Bio-Chemistry. The person who had suggested we take the class must have meant “a snap” ironically, or else he was predicting the sound of my will breaking. On the first day of class the professor announced that the course was intended for pre-med students, and was by no means a write-off science credit for dopey humanities majors. Mike and I tried to keep up, but by the end of the second lecture we were both completely lost, stifling giggles and rendering detailed drawings of God peeing on someone’s grave. By midterms we’d already failed a number of quizzes and assignments and had been informed that our performance on the upcoming exam would determine our chances of passing the course. Odds ranged from “maybe” to “hell no.”

Stricken by the fear of having to take the course over again, we took our books to IHOP for a long night of pre-midterm studying. In the time it took to consume a plate of pancakes, we decided to drop the course. The last add/drop period had just begun, so we had two days to get the forms, get them signed, and turn them in. Which is exactly what we did, shortly before the registrar’s office closed on the Friday before spring break. It was almost surgical, like cutting out a tumor with a bit of paperwork. We’d taken a load off and put it right on the biology department, and in less than an hour we were headed back to Dallas in Mike’s car to enjoy our success with a week of vacation.

As soon as we reached the highway Mike put Let it Be in the stereo and turned up the volume. Two of us riding nowhere / Spending someone’s hard earned pay. / You and me Sunday driving, not arriving / On our way back home. Perfect! We were headed home, too, and were best friends, just like John and Paul. I’d always imagined them sitting across from each other during the Let it Be sessions, strumming guitars and harmonizing, smiling at this last reminder of their friendship. Their band and their partnership had been fractured for a while, but they could still remember days, not even a decade earlier, when they’d faced trouble laughing, doing whatever suited them at the time. And, I thought then, maybe “Two Of Us” was more than just a wistful remembrance, but an acknowledgement that their friendship would endure after all.

At that moment I realized I understood that bond. Mike and I had weathered middle school and high school together and just had our first minor collegiate victory. So no matter what might happen in the next three and a half years, or even after that, we could always depend on our friendship to last at its most basic, and most important, level. I guess Mike felt the same way, because when the song ended he said exactly what I felt. “I love that song. You can just see John and Paul smiling as they recorded it.”

“Yeah, definitely.” He knew. I was glad.

“Weird that it’s actually about Paul and Linda.”

“…What?”

Mike, a more learned Beatles fan than I, explained the song’s true origin – Paul had written it for Linda, not John. I was crushed. The smiling, the laughing over guitars, the trust in a lasting friendship all vanished. All that was left was a silly McCartney-formula love song. I know “The Long And Winding Road” serves the song-for-friendship function, but it lacks the high spirits of “Two Of Us.” The latter has lost much of its appeal for me, but if nothing else my confused understanding of the tune gave me a new appreciation of Mike’s friendship, forever rooted in the earth of boyhood, strong even as we age.