I lost touch with my high school classmates about 2 days after graduation and I’m surprised it took that long. However, I still keep in touch with several of my friends from grammar school. In fact my best friend and I have been best friends since the sixth grade. We are now in our 30’s. I just realized that’s over half our lives…we are SO old. 
My frequent moves have made it kind of difficult to keep friends for a long time. The oldest friend I have with whom I speak on a semi-regular basis is someone I met just before my senior year of high school at an academic camp – 10 years or so.
E-mail is quite an excellent tool.
I met my best fiend in high school. Since he *is[/] my best friend, obviously we’ve kept in touch. I’m also still friends with “the girl next door”.
And I still talk to my first friend I met when we moved back to the States from Japan. We were four years old. But I have to admint that if I’d met him today I wouldn’thave anything to do with him.
I met my best fiend in high school. Since he is my best friend, obviously we’ve kept in touch. I’m also still friends with “the girl next door”.
And I still talk to my first friend I met when we moved back to the States from Japan. We were four years old. But I have to admint that if I’d met him today I wouldn’thave anything to do with him.
I have some friends from high school, kept them through the college years, and they are still my friends today. Technically.
The truth is, while we had fun all through the college years, having parties and generally getting together a lot, these days we only see each other when someone gets married, or has some type of shower. And since we don’t really have anything in common now, all we can think of to talk about is how great the “old days” were and lament about how we never see each other unless there’s a shower or wedding. It’s a strange situation right now, as some things happened last year that made me take a closer look at these people, and I realize now that, going by the definition of the word, I really don’t consider any but one of them a “friend.”
For a long time, I was afraid of losing them, but after my epiphany, I realized that I am not bothered by not having them in my life. So I have stopped trying to keep in touch, which I was never good at anyway.
At least one of them senses it, I think. I was not invited to her child’s birthday party recently - which is something all of us take for granted that we’d be invited to (and the rest probably were). I can honestly say that I don’t care.
Wow, it felt good to get that out.
I keep in touch with 2 or 3 people from high school, who I see when I go home for the holidays and we email now and again. Since they are scattered geographically its hard to see one another often. I am very close w/ 2 former roommates from college – we vacation together at least a couple of times a year – and keep in moderate touch with a few more. Just the other day 2 old friends from junior high called me and we caught up – that was really fun, actually. All of these people are folks that I still really like, admire and have fun with. Its nice to look back and realize I made friends with these people for all the right reasons! Of course, none of them have gone through a major life transition (ex: marriage, babies) that I haven’t so I guess time will tell.
I don’t like to talk about my best fiends. :eek:
You can never tell when you need one and you might have blown his cover. 
My best friend from high school? I still keep in touch with him. He’s in my fantasy baseball leagues (many of 'em) and I was just e-mailing him today about his fantasy football league.
No, I do not. I had very few real friends in HS, and a lot of people who pretended to be when they needed tutoring. The real friends have all moved away. I’m not very good at keeping in touch.
My best friend, however, I met in college. We are still in touch. But then, we live in the same town. My other best friend from college moved away and we kept in touch for years, but not since I got married. He’s gay and I think he was afraid my husband would be a typical Polk County homophobe. (He’s not. Not really. He’s not really comfortable around gays, but is not hostile to them, either. He would have treated Lee as nicely as any of my other friends.)
But I’m so lousy at the keeping in touch with people that I don’t talk to my parents more than about once a month, so nobody else stands a chance.
I know I mentioned this in another thread about a month ago, but my best friend from high school and I recently found each other through the internet. She lives in Texas now but came to Florida recently and we got together and had the best time; it was like we had never lost touch (we hadn’t seen each other in 17 years).
Sometimes there’s nothing better than an old friend. People change as they get older, but a good friend from your youth is really special.
Other than my family, there’s only one person I’m still in contact with that I knew in high school or before. We moved around a bit when I was a kid, so I didn’t really hang onto elementary school friends. Almost my entire junior high and high school years were spent in one place, however, except for my senior year: we moved two weeks before my senior year started. Even worse, we moved from a medium-sized college town that was about as cosmopolitan as it gets in Arkansas to a small town in the Delta of about 2000 people. We’d lived in similar places before, but after five years away from it, I was still in culture shock. I had no use for anyone, and spent the whole year distancing myself from the everyone there: most spent their free time drinking and smoking pot, so I quit both of those activities. My attire for school (this was the 1981-82 school year) was usually either a white dress shirt, knit tie, and tweed sport coat with jeans or one of my collection of Sex Pistols or Clash t-shirts. The greatest compliment paid to me the entire year was from a girl who’d just met a French exchange student from a nearby town, who said to me “I guess you’re the closest thing to a foreign exchange student we’ve had around here.” Needless to say, I didn’t form any enduring friendships.
I’m pretty much guaranteed never to go to my own high school reunions, since I have no connection whatever with anyone from the school where I actually graduated, and I won’t be on the list of graduates from my previous school, so I’ve got a permanent hall pass on that one.
The only person I knew in high school that I’m still friends with was in the same German class with me for a couple of years in high school, but we really developed a close relationship once we were in college together (including rooming together our freshman year). We still talk every other month or so, and get together occasionally (he’s living about four and half hours away).
I’ve completely lost touch with everyone I knew in my high school. Even though I haven’t moved that far away, I didn’t even go to the recent reunion, as high school was unpleasant for me. Also, I didn’t want to play the “I have the 1.8 kids and a house with a white picket fence…do you?” kind of games. I did have one H.S. friend that I became close friends with in college, but she dropped me. 
I do have a couple friends from college that I’m occasionally in touch with, but I had better luck with keeping friends from my old church. I have quite a few good friends at the one I go to now.
That is one sad thing about our modern, urban, culture these days…it seems harder to make and keep lifelong friends, even if you work at it.
Absolutely right, GolfWidow. I was part of a gaggle of neighborhood kids who grew up together, from kindergarten through high school. Then I went away to college and am now living on the opposite coast. Although I’ve lost touch with most of them, I call my friend Mel about once every year (we’re in our mid-forties now) and our talks are as if we had never been apart. We started out together as Bluebirds (baby Camp Fire Girls) but took different paths (I finished my doctorate, she got a GED a few years ago). Perhaps because of our common ground, our differences had little impact. I know if we were living closer together, we would see or call each other every day.
I play poker once a month with a group that is mostly friends I’ve had for ~35 years now (junior high) and I see a few of them at other odd times. I have another friend who goes back to 4th grade who now lives in another city. I’m in touch with him and his wife every 4-6 weeks, and I spend a weekend or two with them every year. Another friend in NM stays in touch by phone pretty regularly (I talk to him more than I do my siblings).
My 30th high school reunions (2 schools) will come up next year and I’ll definitely attend the one for the smaller school. I went to the 5th, 10th and 20th reunions and had a blast - I think the longer it’s been since you were in high school, the less whatever your relationship with any individual from your class matters.
The three girls I used to walk to school with in elementary school all have left Hawaii. One’s in Columbus, one’s in Seattle, and the other is in China. I don’t really talk to all but one of them anymore- it’s been a while since we all hung out together.
I’ve kept in touch with high school friends, mostly. My best friend from h.s. recently moved to Boston to be with her fiancé, but we keep in touch by email. KKBattousai’s in LA, and we talk almost daily on ICQ. Another friend of ours is in Minnesota, and we send emails all the time. The rest of my friends I met or got close to while in college.
Do you need to keep old friends? Not if that’s the only reason you’re keeping them around.
My high school group had fallen apart as a result of behavior rarely seen outside of Melrose Place before we had even graduated. One I am still pretty close with - she visited me at work today and invited me to her birthday party in a couple weeks. Another, my best friend in HS moved about 100 miles away while I was doing my third year of college abroad. She had a baby not long after high school graduation, so we haven’t been on the same plane for a long time. I was worrying about my 10-page essay while she was trying to juggle school, work, and being a single mom. Not really comparable. We still talk on the phone and email sometimes, though. I wish she lived closer, I still value her friendship a lot.
What’s really sad is that I can’t maintain friendships with my friends from college, and I only graduated in March. The only people I communicate with are my friends from Israel - my friends from Santa Cruz are still in school, or they transferred or dropped out and I lost track of them, and none of them live anywhere near me anyway. But this last week I flew to Ohio to go to the wedding of my best friend in Israel. I hadn’t seen her in a year, it was fantastic.
I have a few friends that I keep in touch with from highschool. One lives across the country, but we talk every couple of weeks and she comes home every year for a couple of weeks and we see each other then… I would say we are still very close as we tell each other everything going on in our lives, call for advice or a shoulder to cry on etc. We have been friends since grade 8.
The other is Kelli (kellibelli). We have been friends since I was in grade 10… before that she tolerated me as her little brother’s girlfriend 
We see each other all the time and I think it’s safe to say we are as close as sisters could ever be, even our kids act more like siblings than friends. We have had our ups and downs, we have not spoken for almost a year at one point… but through it all we have remained best buds.
I have two other girl griends that I met about a year after high school, we are still the best of friends 10 years later.
All these people are important in my life and I consider them all my best friends…I’m lucky to have so many who I can call “best”.
From HS ? None - I wasn’t what you’d call popular at all.
My very best friend from first grade, sometimes colleague, army buddy & drinking pal on occasions too numerous to mention - yes, I see him about twice a year (he lives in France right now, the logistics are a bit tricky). But once we’re together, it’s like taking up the same conversation.
My old gang of friends from computing school have managed to stick together, even though it’s been 10 years now. Then again, we work at it - go skiing together etc. Good bunch of people, although very different.
It would help if I had friends from high school.
I know of one person (there a few others, but I never got too close to them) who was not only friendly and courteous…an EXTREME rarity in that cesspool they called a Catholic school, believe me…but genuinely liked me. She was always willing to lend a hand with a difficult assignment or listen to my problems. Sadly, she left for the mainland immediately after graduation and I haven’t heard from her since. (I think she works for a research firm now.) BTW, if I ever get invited to a reunion, I’ll tell them (and by “them” I mean students, teachers, and faculty) that they can stuff it. Some of the most disgusting human beings (if you can call them that) I’ve ever met in my life were in that overpriced sham of a Catholic school, and, barring an act of God (ha) I have absolutely no reason to believe that anyone of them has improved.
No, the people I really want to get in touch with again are my old buddies from my past jobs, both the newspaper and the Cutco branch. Some very admirable people there, and I hated not being able to see them anymore. I’ve been meaning to get in touch again for some time, but I always get caught up with something else.
There are six or seven people from high school that I make a conscious effort to keep up with. Two are sisters whom I usually introduce as my sisters; they live in the same town, and I see them at least once a week. One pair of twins that I’ve known since kindergarten and I still get together every couple of months, usually to drink and gamble. Two or three others I e-mail and see whenever I can get our paths to cross.
I live about an hour and a half away from my hometown, and I go home about every other Sunday for the day. I never try to look anyone up, though–I just have dinner with my parents, see my grandma, and go home. Most of the people I care to see have gone on to get lives somewhere else.
We didn’t have a 5Y reunion, and since my 10Y will be during my residency, I probably won’t be able to make it. (I’m sure as hell not wasting a rare day off on it.) I will go after I get through and am a fabulously wealthy physician, so I can say “neener neener” to all the girls who wouldn’t go out with me in high school.
Dr. J