The background noise at Buzz’s in Lanikai was especially loud, so I leaned into the conversation, struggling to hear the stories an old friend shared with the rest of our table. The stories were entertaining, but they weren’t making sense to me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was saying.

I knew the stories — most of them anyway. I had been a part of nearly every one, many years ago. I had even instigated most of the shenanigans we engaged in — at least, that’s how the stories explained my role.

We hadn’t seen each other in years, so this was an opportunity to catch up. But as those stories spilled out, my part in them seemed oddly unfamiliar. I didn’t recognize my younger self.

Back in the day, my friend and I went to a lot of parties. We were Frick and Frack with beer. That part I recognized.

We regularly joked (and drank) around a fire pit we found behind someone’s house just a short walk from Kailua Beach. That didn’t seem an outrageous story until I remembered that we didn’t know the owner or ever ask permission. And the fires were kind of large, too.

We had flirted with waitresses when we were dishwashers at an Enchanted Lake restaurant, and when we drank pau hana beers while parked at Lanikai Point, we complained that the waitresses wouldn’t flirt back.

The stories just kept getting more outrageous, though. My friend insisted I had once driven his date home because he was too drunk to drive. I still don’t remember that. But he didn’t remember the time we got kicked off Maui for running across the end of the runway at the Kaanapali airport.

I don’t think I was ever the life of the party or a bad influence. Just clueless and irresponsible.

To understand the stories, you have to understand my friend. He is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Generous, hardworking and the first to buy a round. He’ll agree to most anything you ask, like the time I needed another runner for a relay that went around Oahu. Or the time he agreed to help me remodel my condo. I promised cold beer.

We met in high school and bonded over a moment of teenage crisis one night after a track meet in Waipahu, when we realized we had missed every ride home to Kailua. That was us on the freeway onramp, two 16-year-old boys with their thumbs out.

Our glory days were in Kailua in the late 1970s. It was a quiet beach town. We drank Michelob because we couldn’t afford Heineken. We drove VW bugs. Just about everyone in Kailua drove a VW bug.

But that was a long time ago. My friend became a successful entrepreneur on the West Coast. I got married, fathered children, established a career. We had become role models, at least in some circles.

It was good to see my friend, and I gave him a big hug when I left. As I drove home, though, I couldn’t stop thinking how uncomfortable it was to remember those stories. That I felt so different — conservative, I guess — that being reminded of that change bordered on depressing.

I thought that when I got home I’d have a beer for old times’ sake, but I went to bed instead.

Reach Mike Gordon at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.