It's jarring when the numbskulls you grew up with turn out to be responsible and productive adults

 

This is not the Matt I knew in the 1980s, believe me.

The guy pictured above is Matt Schulz. Or "Matthew G. Schulz," as he's officially known in his capacity as Councilman at Large for the city of Kirtland, Ohio.

I've known Matt (Matthew G...whatever) since about 1975, I would guess. We grew up across the street from one another and spent many hours hanging out. Later we played high school football together and graduated a year apart.

Today is Matt's birthday, an occasion for looking back at the many memories we made before marriage, kids and all the responsibilities of adulthood conspired to limit our communications to sporadic texts and once-every-two-years lunch dates.

Matt is not only a respected longtime councilperson in Kirtland, he is also a civil engineer for the Ohio Department of Transportation. He has a wonderful wife and four great kids. He is, by all accounts, a pillar of his community.

Which is amazing to think about, because when we were kids (and please understand how much love I have for this man when I say this), Matt was a knucklehead.

He just was. We were ALL knuckleheads. I spent my formative years around a group of boys who, in any given situation, would always choose the stupidest course of action.

We threw rocks at each other, ran through people's backyards together, committed occasional acts of vandalism on stopped freight trains, set off firecrackers we had no business playing with, and just generally set the bar very high when it came to being young, dumb and annoying.

Matt was the ringleader of many of these shenanigans. He would later go on to do even stupider things in his life, as so many of us do.

But then he got his act together, earned his college degree, met and married Katarina, and became the upright citizen you see pictured above.

At his core, though, he is still Matt. He is still funny, smart and sarcastic. He became a grumpy old man in his 20s and continues to live up to that title in his 50s.

But he is Matt in responsible adult clothes, and he's someone to be admired.

It's just that I still think of him as one of the holy terrors of Harding Drive, the street where we grew up. The man you see today is a direct descendant of the hellion I once knew, and it's difficult sometimes to understand how he ended up in such a good place.

Such, I suppose, is the product of having a good wife, a mother who loves him, and a faith in God that I know sustains him.

Happy birthday, my friend. In celebration, I will be driving by your house tonight to throw a rock at you.

I'm counting on you having the maturity not to throw it back at me.