At one of several colleges I attended, my favorite friend was a girl named Grace Wing. She was bright, funny and very beautiful, as out of place at that particular school as I was. Grace was braver than I with adventurous hair on which she often experimented with color, and a pet snake that coiled against her belly when she lay on her bed, reading.
Toward the end of the semester she lent me her treasured Johnny Mathis album, which was later stolen from my room along with some of mine. I never replaced it, which was inexcusable and I lost a friend I really liked, for how could anyone stay friends with someone who demonstrated so little caring and social awareness?
A few years later, the band Jefferson Airplane became a huge sensation and their lead singer was my old friend, now Grace Slick. I once saw an interview in which she credited Johnny Mathis as one of her earliest influences. To this day, I believe she had the single best female voice in Rock music, ever. To say that she was the voice of our generation is a gross understatement.
I still feel terrible that I treated her so shabbily. For years I searched music stores for the Mathis album, which I believe was his first, in hopes of finding Grace and sending it to her. She certainly didn't need me to provide it, but doing so would have given me closure of a sort. And I still owe her.
I try to be more careful with my friends now because they are far more precious than I realized when I was young.
