I’ve always prided myself on being the friend who is likely to reach out to other old friends first. I like staying in touch with friends, getting news about families and reminiscing about old times – which always involves laughter.

One of my friends not long ago called me a community builder.

I liked that. I think he meant I like getting people together to laugh and tell stories and sure, have a beer or bourbon or two.

But I didn’t do that with my old friend Mark, and I’m feeling bad about that.

And now it’s too late.

Mark Swahn – “Swanny” to all his close friends – was my co-pilot in our junior and senior years of high school.

He was always ready to go for a cruise in my butterscotch-and-white-chic-magnet Dodge Ram Charger, nicknamed Fooby by one the girls. Sometimes those trips involved picking bottles along the road for a cheap 12-pack (drinking age was 18 in Vermont then!) or going to toss a baseball or kick a soccer ball – or sometimes to just ride and listen to tunes.

I liked being around him because he was arguably the funniest person I know. I love to laugh and make people laugh too, but Swanny was the master.

He was like a skinny Chris Farley.

Nothing was off limits.

His humor was often loud, self-deprecating and goofy.  

Some of it was shock-value slapstick humor, like throwing gum on the bare ground, stepping on it, and popping it back in his mouth.

He could also imitate voices and would do this one name, “Wooooooooooniiieeee Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” and would hold the last “eee” until he literally turned red. It would be a minute after he started, literally!

Sometimes, to elevate the schtick, he would take the “Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” part up about four octaves in a falsetto that would leave Prince salivating.

His interaction with his parents, sometimes as I waited for him to change from a sports uniform to street clothes, sometimes in front of his mom in the kitchen, was equally funny. They played off each other, with his mom seemingly disgusted, but not really.

He was also a really good athlete. The type of guy I like to play with. Somebody who hates to lose. I’ve heard legendary stories about him as a younger kids smashing his plastic baseball helmets when he made outs in kickball or tennis ball baseball games, only to return a day later with a taped-up version.

I grew up in a different town and went to a different grade school, so I missed those games but loved hearing stories of his youth.

I’m not sure why I didn’t seek Mark out more after high school. I went to college. He went to work. We then both got married, went to each other’s weddings, had kids and before I knew it, decades had gone by.

We did reconnect in 2015 for our 30^th high school reunion, and it’s so cliché, but it literally was like we had been in the Ram Charger the day before. There were cornhole battles, a dunk-off on a much shorter than 10-foot basketball hoop, beers, food and deep belly laughs.

I didn’t want it to end.

Classmate Paul Lasky snapped a lot of shots that day and got one great one of Swanny and I howling. He posted it after news that Mark had passed, and the flood of thoughts came as a result.

As I write this, I’m planning to head up to his wake on Friday night after work.

I hate wakes. I find them almost torturous both to be in the line of family members and to go through it paying respects. I’ve done both.

But I can’t attend his Saturday service, and I like and respect his family too much to not show up for them – and for him – for what it’s worth.

I’m feeling bad that I didn’t reach out sooner. He’s the first of my same-aged good friends to pass and I’m feeling bad that the last time I chatted with him was at that reunion – nine years ago.

But thinking about it a little more, the last vision I have of him was like that picture Paul took of us howling.

Which is exactly like I remember him from high school.  

 And maybe that’s ok.

RIP little buddy. And I have no doubt at all that wherever you are, people are laughing.