Are you happy? Only if you are...

This is Benj:
Behind him at the Car Museum in L.A. is his favourite car, Herbie.

Benj and I have had a special friendship for as long as I've known. He is five years my elder, but when we met (I think I was about 4) we hit it off and became instant best friends.

Benj was handed mental and physical disabilities at birth, which is the first thing anyone will notice when they see him. However, he also has an amazing charisma and infectious love for life. This charisma made him a local celebrity on our street where we grew up as next-door neighbours. Everyone knew him, and everyone took care of him. He could walk out his front door in downtown Toronto at 8 p.m., and his family knew he would be fine. When I first met him we were of comprable "mental age". We would have fun riding our Big Wheels together or stomping on ants on the sidewalk.

As we grew up, however, this changed. At some point I became aware of what was happening...I was growing up faster than him. This was hard to take, and for a few years our friendshp suffered. But with time, I learned to accept this change in our friendship. It went from having a best friend to having a younger cousin or a younger brother. One of his most common questions to me was "Are you happy?" to which my truthful reply was "Only if you are". He became someone I would always want to take care of and always want to have fun with. Suddenly I realized that our relationship haddened actually changed...everything was always about having fun.

His house became a haven for me where I could escape the stresses of everyday adolescence, be it due to school or family or girls or anything else. No matter what was happening, we just continued to fly kites, catch frogs at the pond, watch Herbie movies, or play Hungry Hippos. Throughout my adolescence, we stayed great friends. I wrote essays about our friendship during highschool, and two television documentaries talked about our friendship. In the first one I was 5 and didn't have much to say, but in the second I was 15 and got interviewed extensively. That one ends with me saying something to the effect of:

Sometimes I wonder what will happen. I won't live here forever. What if I move or I go to university and move to another city? [pause] I know we'll stay friends forever.

Two years after the filming, I moved halfway across town. Then I left Toronto to study the in Montreal and Vancouver. Somewhere during that time Benj and his mom moved to L.A. where is two sisters were already living. As I predicted at the awkward age of 15, we've kept in touch. In the two visits I've made to California since he moved there, I've spent a couple of days visiting him. I have asked him to be in my wedding party, and he has accepted and is excited about it.

This week I discovered a something new about Benj. There has been a book published about him. There is something very special about this book. It is written by his mother. Benj's mother is a clinical psychologist that specializes in children with disabilities. So in a sense, he is very lucky to be have been born to her. She knows how to help Benjamin live a full life.

Benj's mother has encouraged his interests and helped his development always. Whether it was getting a dog or a turtle, or learning to play the harp (the Harp!!), or joining the local bowling league, or playing hockey, or finding temp work, she has made it happen. Thanks in no small part to her, Benj is a hard worker, an accomplished athlete, and a musician. He lives a very full life, and is one of the most sincerely happy people you could ever hope to meet.

As I told his mother in a recent letter to her, I am very excited about this book. It is both a personal and a professional description of his development, and will give me a deeper insight into one of the most important people in my life. And in addition, just thinking about reading this book is reminding me of everything our friendship has meant over the years.