The busy-ness of life often gets in the way of meeting up with friends. But two friends who reunited after 20 years have shown that love remains strong and friendship doesn’t fade with time.
One day, Uber driver Danny Blanton from Texas was driving in an area he doesn’t normally frequent. He dropped off one customer and then decided he'd pick up one more customer before calling it a day.
So he did—not realizing the man was his old friend John Johnson, whom he hadn’t seen in years. The two cordially began talking to each other, but seconds later, Mr. Johnson stopped, looked at Mr. Blanton, and said, “I know you.”
Mr. Blanton looked back and instant joy flooded his face as he recognized John.
“Chances are crazy that we would even cross paths,” Mr. Blanton told The Epoch Times. “I’ve never had anybody in my rideshare that I’ve known, and [he] is my best friend from a long time ago.”
Mr. Blanton says he doesn’t think it was a coincidence.
The Friendship
Mr. Blanton has had a varied but meaningful career path that has led him from working jobs such as bouncer, bartender, craftsman with a CNC machine and 3D printing, and, of course, taxi driver.He met Mr. Johnson for the first time when he worked as a bouncer at a club in Texas. Mr. Blanton described the people who worked at the club as like a “family,” where they looked out for each other and enjoyed working together. He especially loved working with Mr. Johnson because they were so similar.
“Even though we don’t have much, we’re always trying to do [things] for other people,” Mr. Blanton said.
Despite the good times and working with people he loved, Mr. Blanton had to quit because his son needed him.
“I had to quit working in the clubs because my son’s mother abandoned him when he was 5,” he said.
Life got in the way. Mr. Blanton had to leave the club before phones and social media made it easy to stay in contact with others, so he lost contact with Mr. Johnson and the years passed.
But it’s as if fate had already planned a surprise for the two friends.
Watch the video:
“I posted it for a couple of friends to see,” Mr. Blanton said. “I’ve never posted a video on TikTok. The very first video that I posted was that one and within two hours, it had 2,000 views. Within four hours it had like 4,000 views. After six hours, it had 4.2 million views.”
One commenter said, “love this bro. you can see all the old memories come flooding back.”
Another said, “Danny we need the longer version! We weren’t done smiling!”
Being reconnected, the besties try to spend a lot more time together now.
Mr. Blanton told the newspaper that they recently got together at a local restaurant to film a new video to thank everyone for the support, and even though life and work can make it hard to get together, they are determined to not let that happen again.
