Haven't Seen you in Ages

My neighbor, probably after a lot of nagging from his wife, has started to build an addition onto their very small house (900 sq ft). There is a great deal of activity over there with heavy machinery moving dirt and rock to create the basement. Being naturally curious (ok, I like to watch the bulldozer and backhoe), I stopped in to have look at the hole. (I was asked later where I have been for an hour and I said without thinking, "Oh,nothing much, I was just looking at Bill's hole"...needless to say, that was met with odd looks and sniggering).
At any point, one of the guys running the bulldozer was a very old friend whom I had not seen in 20 years or better. He saw me standing on the side, waved, and shut his machine down. JL got down off his machine, stuck his hand out and said with a big grin, "Hello John, I haven't seen you in ages." We shook hands as he leaned over and spit a little tobacco juice on the ground. He said again, "Man, I haven't seen you in ages." He then proceeded to speak with my neighbor, Bill and he said, "There's old John, I haven't seen him in ages." Now JL is college educated, a very talented musician, and most importantly, one of the nicest guys you will ever run across. All that being said, I think years of riding on a bulldozer have shaken a few bolts loose. JL proceeded to tell everyone that would listen to him about our friendship and more importantly that he had not seen me in ages. I swear to you, this went on for about 15-20 minutes. We caught a bit more and as I was leaving, we shook hands and said that we needed to keep in touch. We agreed that sounded like a good plan. As I turned away, he said, "Yep, lets keep in touch because I haven't seen you in ages."