childhood friend

Perused internet sites of my childhood friend Eric from back in Halifax. He is a self-made millionaire, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, photographer, etc. etc. Offers adventure travel tours, seminars on leadership, business success, relationships, and seems creepy but maybe a bit vulnerable, at least on his unwittingly hilarious youtube clips that look like something out of Saturday Night Live. And he speaks in an odd, twangy American accent, despite being from Halifax, having Afrikaaner parents, and seemingly having lived most of his adult life in England and Canada. Still, he was a really great friend from the day we crashed bikes when I was six, to about the age of 12. And I loved his parents, his dry-wiited deadpan mother, and his father, who was always calling me 'the intellectual', because at 9 I loved talking about the Iranian Revolution with him, or saying to me 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts' because of my partial Greek heritage.