Here’s a question that I’ve been pondering in my mind the last couple of hours. Do you keep in touch with your old friends from high school? I honestly don’t and I really don’t think that I have any use for them. I’ll see 'em at a reunion and the only thing they’re hoping to hear from me is that I failed. =) Do we need to keep old friends?
I keep mine in a box in the basement.
Honestly, though, I only graduated last year, and already I only stay in touch with one or two. Going to college and joining a frat just exposed me to so many new people that I really couldn’t keep up with everyone else.
Oh, and opinion questions belong in IMHO. Only questions that have (or possibly have) a solid answer belong in GQ.
Welcome to the board.
–Tim
I have about four friends I keep in touch with from High school. I don’t intend on ever, EVER going to a reunion.
but, there is only 1 person from h.s. I am in contact with on a regular basis (about once a week) and about 10 I see or talk to about every couple of months or years. That’s so weird as I had a lot of really close friends back them. Several lived in the neighborhood I grew up in and I knew them my entire existance! The fact that I only see my best friend in the whole world (from birth to graduation) every year or so kind of breaks my heart to be honest with you.
I went to my 5 and 10 year reunion, but not the 15 or 20. I intend to go to the 25 (2003).
I only keep in touch with one friend from high school and he didn’t even go to the same school as me. From time to time, I’ve missed some of my other friends, but I figure there is a reason we’ve drifted apart.
Then again, I’m an Army brat. My husband still has friends from preschool! It seems so weird to me; the only people I’ve known all my life is my family.
That’s a good question. I’ve wondered about it myself sometimes. If you have nothing in common with them anymore, and don’t enjoy spending time together, why go through the motions?
I just worked out that although it was ten years since I left (high) school, in the last year I’ve met up with eight people who were in my class, and a couple of others who weren’t in my class. I spend much more time with the friends I made at university though.
I look up old friends when I go back to my hometown, almost 2000 miles from where I live now. We reminisce; go gaga over eachother’s babies, children, pets; and maybe drink up to 1/3 the number of beers we did when we weren’t supposed to 20 years ago.
But I rarely call them up once I’m back in DC. It’s tough enough keeping up with friends here. For example, of the 12 people in our wedding party four years ago (besides us):
[ul]
[li]Best Man: lives 25 miles away. see him and his family about once a month.[/li][li]Groomsman #1: my brother, 2000 miles away. talk to him about 3 times a year.[/li][li]GM #2: lives 4 miles away. I was in his wedding party 2 months after our wedding. They and we have gotten together once for dinner since.[/li][li]GM #3: He and bridesmaid #3 live together, 25 miles away. We’ve seen them twice since the wedding.[/li][li]GM #4: He used to live 25 miles away, and we saw him once a month. After his separation/divorce, he moved about 450 miles away, see him twice a year.[/li][li]GM #5: Brother-in-law, 700 miles away. See him 2-4 times a year, wife talks to him about once a week.[/li][li]Matron of Honor: before I dated my to-be-wife, she and I hung out almost nightly at a dive bar in Arlington. She became my landlady when I rented her fiance’s condo. Then about a year after the wedding, we moved to a bigger place. We’ve seen her twice by chance at a bowling alley (different leagues), and just recently stopped by to visit them. She and her hubby only live 5 miles away.[/li][li]Bridesmaid #1: She lived 15 miles away, we saw her about once to twice a month. Then she fell off the face of the Earth about a year and a half ago. Sad, because our daughter’s middle name is the same as her first name.[/li][li]Bridesmaid #2: about 25 miles away. we play cards with them about once a month.[/li][li]Bridesmaid #3: see GM #3[/li][li]Bridesmaid #4: about 20 miles away, haven’t seen her since the wedding, even though her son’s godmother is my wife.[/li][li]Bridesmaid #5: childhood friend of my wife, lives 700 miles away. See her about 2-4 times a year, when we visit in-laws.[/li][/ul]
These were our best friends 5 years ago, when we started planning the wedding. But leading up to the wedding, we’d started growning apart from a few.
So to keep in touch with people we knew as teenagers 20 years ago is really too much.
Reunions are nice, actually. I liked my 10 year reunion. I saw who I wanted to see, and ignored who I didn’t want to talk to.
It’s kind of wierd how you spend your first 18 years getting to know all these people, then likely lose contact with almost all of them in the space of just a few years. Especially if you go off to college, where you invariably form a new circle of friends that you will probably prefer to your HS friends, if for no other reason than the usually greater variety of people in college gives you a greater chance to find people with whom you will click.
Off to IMHO.
Hell yes!!!
I have had a couple of best friends for 25 years (since we were 13 and 14 years old). We have gone through puberty, boyfriends, school, marriages, divorces, babies, teenagers, together. We have always been their for each other no matter what.
One of them lives just up the street and we talk every day, the other lives on a farm about 200 miles away in a little cowboy town of Wyoming. We drive up and spend the weekend with her a couple of times during the year. We usually hit the cowboy bar one night and have an oldfashioned girls only pajama/pizza/beer party the second night.
One thing is certain, men come and go, but girlfriends are forever. I wouldn’t give them up for the world! I couldn’t love them more if they were blood sisters.
A year or so again, I got an e-mail from my another best friend from elementary school. We lost touch when she moved away in junior high. We have been writing back and forth through e-mail and plan on getting together the next time I am in Seattle.
I am not close with any of the friends I had in HS. I e-mail a few from time to time, and there is one who is getting married in a few months, and I will attend the wedding. There is another friend who I went to HS with (in Ft. Lauderdale) that moved to Tampa a few years after I did, and now lives down the street from me. Due to our extremely different work schedules, we rarely get to see one another.
I’m not really close with most of my old college buddies either. There is one, a male friend named Chris that I am still close with.
Most of my current friends are work buddies.
One of the biggest reasons I am not close with so many of my older friends is because we basically live on two different planes of existance. I still lead the same lifestyle at 31 as I did at 21. I am single, living in an apartment, no major commitments, and in a career that isn’t very upwardly mobile. My old friends are married or getting married, owning homes, high gear careers, kids, all that stuff. I have nothing to talk to them about. I do miss the old times, but, you can’t go back!
I kept in touch with my high school clique for about 5 years, then finally gave up/lost interest. I place more value on my two girlfriends I’ve known since kindergarten. I do keep in touch with my high school BF. We were together 3 yrs. and went to college together, so he’s pretty high on my list of priorities.
Well, I lost touch with my closest friends from high school; and now that I don’t see them anymore, I really want to get back in touch with them. Don’t know what you’ve got 'till it’s gone, I guess.
Nope, for one simple reason: I didn’t have many real friends in high school. I was one of those brainy outcasts in a small school full of redneck jocks. My best friend from high school, who I had remained close with, has been dead for four years. My other friends turned out to be fair-weather friends who turned into total dicks shortly before graduation. (I was an Army brat, so I only spent 6 years in the school system I graduated from.)
I did look up one old friend earlier this year, and e-mailed him. It’s just casual, infrequent contact, but it’s nice talking to him.
I keep in touch with a few friends from college, including the best man from my wedding.
My best girlfriend and I still about every two weeks even though she lives in Chicago and I live in Denver. We have been best friends for 20 years, and we are only 28 years old! I keep in touch with about 5 other people I went to school with on a semi-regular basis. However, when I go home to visit my family, I call about 5 other people, who call more “other” people, and we all end up at the local bar to have lots of beers together. It’s always a great time!
I also have my 10 year class reunion this October, which I am looking forward to going to. I helped organize the reunion, and it was nice to hear about all of the people I went to school with. Of course, I went to a pretty small school and we were a pretty tight bunch.
My girlfriend and I still talk is what I meant to say…
Nope, other than x-mas cards to the one guy who was my college roomie and best man. Didn’t go to my 5th, 10th, or 20th reunions either. Figured if we didn’t care enough to call each other, why go through the trouble. With 1400 kids in the graduating class, what is the chance the 10 I hung with would be there.
That said, my buddy from kindergarten through sophmore year just moved away this summer. Must admit, tho, we were not that close recently. He is a really nice guy, just kind of boring. So we got together kind of out of memory of what was, rather than present enjoyment.
There are some I’ve kept (my buddy Paul & I have known each other since we were 6, 40 years now), and Dave (since we were 13), tried to keep in touch with Peggy (have lost touch, got back in touch, and most recently lost touch again - we were friends in High School), some college friends are still around, some from when I first started working (20+ years) etc.
Many of the people I consider friends are friends because of shared values, not common interest. and, it’s fun having some one with shared memories. As for reunions, I’ve usually passed them by, but did get the “where are they now” book, just so I could see that Patti and Missy STILL like dressing alike, and so on…
thanks for asking.
There are not many people from my past of whom I keep track. A notable exception would be my closest friend from high school. He and I are as much brothers as physically possible. We’ve been through more together than most people go through with their spouses. We’ve committed crimes together, we’ve been hospitalized together. Hell, we’ve even been somewhat intimate with each other’s women. He’s been my brother since we were fourteen. He was my brother for the years that he was living in Paris and I was in New Orleans. Now we’ve both moved to New England separately. Kindred freakin’ spirits, I tell ya. I’ll be the best man at his wedding next October.
Aside from him, there aren’t many others. I still see one of my HS girlfriends every year or so and I do look up some friends that were close whenever I’m in their cities. I don’t really miss anyone from those days. I’ve successfully maintained all the bonds that I’ve wanted to maintain.
Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their parkbench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
of the high shoes of the old friends
Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.
Can you imagine us years from today,
Sharing a parkbench quietly
How terribly strange to be seventy
Old friends, memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears
I don’t keep in touch with even the friends from college and that was only a few years ago. Sigh. I guess it would be different if I still lived in the same city.
Well, that is not completely true. About once a year I get in contact with my crazy friend, Jimmy who was my best friend for a while. He lives in Louisville, KY. He is straight. If any of you Dopers want to say hi to him for me I will give you some more info. 
HUGS!
Sqrl