When you are in elementary school and junior high school people come into our lives that we consider our friends. They are these wonderful people who are there with us as we go through puberty. They make us laugh and they even make us cry. We go through things together like first loves, jealousy, gossip, training bras and the list goes on.
Up to about junior high we can't live wihout these people. They are our world and even being home on the weekends drives us crazy because we are not around our friends as much. Then as we move on to high school something happens. All these other kids from different middle schools who are strangers suddenly are poured into one giant melting pot and we are expected to co-habitate for six hours every day. As much as we vow to stick with our old friends, there is something magical about these new people and we somehow gravitate toward them and slowly ...voila...they become our new friends. We try and still be just as close with our old faithful friends and they try and do the same but strangely...they have new friends too and the chemistry is not always a good mix.
Slowly we become different people molding ourselves to fit our new friends and forgetting our friends of the past, maybe not completely but if we do talk it's brief and definately not the same. High school is a strange time and it's a time when we all try and find our identity while having to realize that soon we will have to choose a career path and become adults. Looking through my yearbook I see all the KITs which was short for keep in touch. Friends promising to be friends forever until graduation but somehow thinking in the back of our minds that we would slowly lose touch.
After I graduated I didn't think I would see many of my friends and while it was sad I realized that life goes on, people move on. Then came Facebook....
Suddenly all these people from my past were here in one place wanting to be my friend. I was suddenly reminded when people's birthdays were and I got continuous updates. Even people I didn't talk to much in high school suddenly remembered me and even they wanted to be my friends...and magically like I was put in a time machine to 1984, there were my friends, my old friends that were there long before I cared about pomp and circumstance.
There are friends whom you know will always be just here on Facebook and then there are old friends who no matter how much time it has been since the last time you talked you realize are friends who are part of your soul. Last night I experienced this with four friends whom I go way back with. Nancy (BFF), Eddie, Sarah and Carl.
The great thing about old friends is that they sometimes come with new friends who are their spouses. This was also true last night when Carl brought Jennifer and Nancy brought Mark.
When we drove into the parking lot of the restaurant we saw Sarah jumping up and down like she just won the lottery, but her happiness came from seeing us and we were just as excited wanting to jump right out of the car. Then we saw Carl and his wife and we all ran to each other and huddled in a bear hug bigger than the one that Carl designed in sixth grade.
What happens at the lotus stays at the lotus but I will tell you this...I have not laughed so hard in months. We made enough inside jokes to last us a lifetime and we had a blast in the process. There we were sitting around this table remembering how we were back in the day yet marveling about how awesome we still were as adults. I smile when I think about it and I can't wait for the next time we can all get together...even if we have to hunt Sarah down in a snow bank.
Someone I will just call my ex #1 friend introduced me to a song called friends. One of the verses says...
Though it's hard to let you go, in the Father's hands we know that a lifetime's not too long to live as friends". I think of those words and they are so true. I feel so blessed and so grateful to have these old and new friends in my life. I have the picture we took in a frame on my desk in a frame that says FRIENDS. We make sense but this time I will spell it CENTS because that is the first letter of our old friends names. Carl, Eddie, Nancy, Tembi and Sarah.
I know that no matter what I may go through in life or how I look, they will always remember me as I was back then and love me for who I am now still and you know what? A lifetime isn't too long to live as friends. I love you guys!
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