This is me and one of my three best friends from high school, Ben.
Ben is the strongest person I’ve ever met.  We’ve been best friends a long time, along with our other two best friends.  In high school we helped each other survive.  We didn’t fit into any group.  A quartet of drama nerds with a penchant for Adam Sandler movies, Waffle House, and late night conversations about how we would run the world one day.  So full of dreams and energy. 

Ever since we were kids, we’ve ended every phone call with “I love you”.  That may sound a bit strange for a bunch of heterosexual guys to say to each other frequently, but for us, it’s just natural.  We’re brothers, and you never know when will be the last time you might get to say that to each other. 

We almost had one of those moments back in 2000.  Ben got in a bad car accident, his car slid off the road and flipped into a ravine. The car wrapped around him, and he was thrown into the remains of the back seat.  No one witness the wreck.  Somehow, with his back broken, Ben managed to pull himself through the wreckage, to the steering wheel.  He flicked the lights on and off until a passing car stopped and called 911.  The mental and physical strength required to do such a thing was great.  Ben has been lifting weights since we were in high school.  We used to give him a hard time about it, but it was his passion in life.  Turns out his workout addiction saved his life, the doctors said his physical shape saved his life.

Getting that phone call was one of the worst moments of my life.  I rushed to the hospital, they let me in to see him.  I hardly recognized him.  He just cried and squeezed my hand, unable to talk.  His spinal cord was crushed, and he remains paralyzed from the waist down. 

Seeing what he has had to go through, how he’s persevered through disappointment and pain, in his quest to walk again, has inspired me.

He still works out, he’s actually become a personal trainer.   He just appeared in a mainstream workout magazine in an article about his body building while confined to a wheel chair.  He’s currently coaching me through a high intensity workout, intended to help me as I train to compete in the US National Surf Kayak Championships. 

It feels good to have people in my life that I know I can count on.  Friends that if I called them at 3am and said ‘I need you to come get me right now’, they’d be there in a flash, no questions asked.  Ben is one of these people in my life, and I am thankful we’re still friends, still brothers, after all these years.