In keeping with my 2021 New Year’s Resolution to forego losing weight or drinking less and resolve to play more golf with old friends – it was so successful I recommitted for 2022 – I teed it up for 54 holes last week in Pinehurst with new friends who are old.

Let me explain the distinction: An old friend is typically someone with whom you grew up but had lost touch with over the years, while this motley crew was a collection of guys, a few of whom I knew but not well, and the majority of whom I knew mostly by reputation.

Most were brothers of the Tau chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, early to mid-1970s vintage, who had graduated and left before my arrival in Chapel Hill on Aug. 26, 1975, the day that I turned 18 and my life forever switched tracks. There were about 20 of us, including four from “Lumbo,” and somehow I had managed an invite to crash the party, which they have thrown annually for decades.

A condition of writing this was that I grant anonymity, but I will share a few of the nicknames — Dr. T, Turtle, Goat, Pigpen, Coxie, Dumpy and Daylight among them – that might crack the window a bit into this colorful crowd; otherwise, I will use initials.

Let us get the golf out of the way quickly, as it was no more than an excuse to assemble. We played Mid-South twice and Pinewild Holly once, and I earned gross medalist honors, which might seem like a brag until you see most of these guys play and realize it is more like Charles Barkley winning that pickup game with those kids in the Capital One commercial. It paid, as Commissioner GC delighted in telling me during an awards ceremony, “nothing.”

I did, however, cash a check for Day 3 with huge help from my partners SW, CM and RC, giving me net earnings for the week of plus $10. So, I left a winner.

This gathering was more about sharing old memories and making new ones. There was a lot of talk about the number of ex-wives, children and grandchildren, money made and sometimes lost, departed buddies, the prostate, medications, joint replacements and, of course, escapades from their years in Chapel Hill. It occurred to me that all these guys had been tremendously successful in their chosen occupations, which is why I made a motion when a lunch bill came that we prorate it according to each person’s ability to pay. It died without a second.

I had a distinct advantage during Storytime, when the stories were not the only thing that were consumed largely, in that I had not heard them before. I listened, mesmerized, while others did the fact-checking and occasionally chimed in to cite embellishment.

As much as I would like to share them, I cannot for several reasons, including most are not appropriate for a newspaper or, for that matter, Netflix; some I am concerned that the statute of limitations has not yet expired; and then there is my inability to remember them with detail.

This one I can: RC was sharing that he became concerned recently that he might be suffering early onset dementia, so he decided to have a mental acuity test, which consists at least in some part of answering a series of questions that a person of average intelligence would find insulting in their simplicity.

According to RC, the key to the test is when an image is shown, and the person being tested is asked whether it depicts a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros.

RC proclaimed, “The correct answer is rhinoceros, so if you can remember that, you can pass the dementia test.”

I had two thoughts: I was being advised on how to cheat on a test to determine if I had dementia, and if I did have dementia, how was I going to remember the correct answer was rhinoceros?

If you found that a fraction as funny as I did, then it was worth sharing.

I left there hoping I had passed the audition, eager for an invite back, and I am told that I did.

I also left understanding what a real brotherhood looks like, that it is organic, is nourished and evolves over time, and it is truly something to behold — and that it is not a marketing tool, contrived and declared like that farce in Durham.