Of all the potential pals in the universe, I end up with these guys?

Apologies from the children’s table near the practice green.

We were a little loud the other night. I’ve been having dinner with these knuckleheads for 20 years now, and we’re always the loudest table. So, from the bottom of our martini glasses, our sincerest apologies. Or, at least from my martini glass. Can’t speak for those other loudmouths.

We were at a patio table, on the edge of a golf course, on one of those soft spring nights that L.A. replicates — one after the other — like counterfeit bills. That’s right, we were outside, and we were still too loud.

Belly laughs bounced around the canyons, and ping-ponged off the foreheads of fretful accountants. By the time the appetizers arrived, squirrels were falling from the trees, and all the woodpeckers had stopped their peckering.

I once had a dinner interview with a former NFL quarterback whose hearing wasn’t what it once was. At 70, he was very loud and didn’t really realize it.

“Sir, I just want to say you are very loud,” a fellow patron told him on his way out.

The fiery quarterback was once noted for a propensity to punch adversaries in the snout, on the field and in various saloons, from Minnesota to Manhattan.

I held my breath. We were in a noisy steakhouse, where a certain raucousness is to be expected. But the quarterback, still physically formidable in the way of pro athletes, could not have been more gracious or apologetic.

I learned from that encounter, but probably not enough. Guys get loud. We howl, we bray. If the grilled beef is right, our eyes start to twinkle a little. A bawdy good time should be nothing to apologize for, yet I do.

Look at that photo. Those aren’t church smiles. They are the smiles of flawed and funny guys who have been in a foxhole together. We’ve seen some things we’d rather not talk about — youth baseball and Pinewood Derbies, a thousand soccer games and too many sixth-grade plays. We know too much about one another’s marriages. We’ve made some money, yet it never seems enough.

The meals come, and one guy tells the story of updating his will. Dusk comes, and another guy talks about growing up in Syracuse and seeing this amazing backdrop, the rosy San Gabriels, every New Year’s Day on TV.

Two guys grew up here, two are from back East, I’m from Chicago. But if you didn’t know better, you’d think we all attended the same grade school. It is the sort of camaraderie you have plenty of at age 12 or 14, and rarely beyond.

One pal is sending a kid off to Michigan in the fall, which to him seems a million miles away, so we vow to visit, to take our noisy road show to Ann Arbor. I fear it’ll be something that Roth wrote: breakdowns, bloody marys, bar fights. If we all come back, it’ll be somewhat of an upset.

Till then, we laugh at all things — especially each other. We are sentimental about only two subjects: our children and our dads. Other than that, we goof on everything.

Now, as I may have mentioned, I have about 3 bucks in the bank, but I am knee-deep in friends. I collect them like baseball cards.

I have so many friends that I have subsets of them: the touch-football buddies, the Happy Hour Hiking Club, my attorney Billable Bob and his sidekicks, Bittner and Big-Wave Dave. There’s Paul, Peterman, Charlie, Jeff and Siskin, and somewhere in the mix, tonight’s dinner companions, these too-loud Dangerfields.

“Waiter, what’s that dope doing in my soup?”

“I think it’s the breast stroke, sir.”

My dinner pals and I have never not had a good time together. We have never had a fight or even a harsh word. Like brothers, we can say the worst things to each other, we can confess our sins.

That’s what these dinners are, sort of raucous confessionals, where we mock our romantic prowess, celebrate our children, toast our parents and remember Rhymer, the great late buddy who started these monthly dinners two decades ago. If we get a little loud, it’s to be sure he’s listening.

Losing him, losing our parents is not lost on us. We realize there are more miles behind us than in front. We are in that purgatory between middle age and retirement, then death, then an afterlife where loopy bacchanals like this come every night.

On the edge of some golf course, in the soft days of spring.

Chris.Erskine@latimes.com

Twitter: @erskinetimes

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