Who is your oldest friend (the non-related person you’ve been friends with the longest) and your oldest friend (the oldest person you’re friends with)?
• My oldest friend would be Vickie—we met in our first year of high school, so that would be, ummm, about 28 years now.
• My oldest friend, on the other hand, would be Anita Page, who turned 90 this past summer.
I still occasionally see a guy I went to kindergarten with, let’s see (damn, I ran out of fingers and toes - may I use yours?) 35 years ago. Over the summer he move a couple hundred miles away, tho, so I doubt I’ll see him as often. Other than that, had a couple of folks over on Sat whom I met in college about 18 years ago.
My oldest friend? Not really sure. I regularly golf with some guys who are getting up there - late 70s early 80s, but I don’t think I’d consider them “friends”. Probably no real friends over 60-65.
Kevin and I met in grade 5. So that would make it some 25-26 years ago. I see him several times a year.
The oldest person I know whom I consider a friend, is Jack. He’s 84, lonely and smells kinda funny. Not clown funny either.
I just “lost” an oldest friend because of his wife.
We had joined the same firm right out of college and got our 10-year’s service pins together. But his wife still can’t recall who I am, after maybe 30 office Christmas parties, company picnics, etc. She found it suspicious that I’d invited him on a fishing trip and she accused him of having a girl on the side and the trip was a sham.
(If he’s ever cheated, or even flirted, he’s kept it well hidden from me for all this time.)
So now he asked me not to contact him, since it upsets her and he doesn’t want the heat.
My oldest friend is Jennifer, the daughter of my mom’s best friend. I have known her since she was born, when I was five months old. Even though the connection is via our moms, Jen and I have our own friendship. We live in different cities now, so we do the birthday card thing, the email exchange, and get together for dinner every year around Christmas.
Sue is the oldest friend that I met by my very own self. We met freshman year of high school (so 17 years ago), became best friends, went to different colleges and talked on the phone once a week, and then ended up living in the same city. I just got off the phone with her, we were making plans to meet for drinks tonight. Most of the friends I see/talk to weekly are friends from high school.
I don’t think I have any friends who are notable for their age. There are several women in my bookclub who are in their late 70s, but I wouldn’t consider them “friends” (or vice versa) since we get together only as a result of very specific book club activities.
All of my friends that I’m close to now I met around the same time. Except my friend Katie who I met before 7th grade.
My oldest friend is probably Phil, I think he’s around 22.
My oldest surviving friendship is with my friend Charlie. We met in when we were in fourth grade, which was 38 years ago. And there’s a group I see regularly, Mike (one of my best friends), Fred and Dave; we get together for a poker game the first Thursday of every month (that’s been going on for 8 1/2 years now). That group came together in seventh grade - 35 years ago.
I know lots of old people at least partially because my mother is in her mid-80s, but as far as a friend I really talk to and know, the oldest one I can think of right now is, I believe, 72.
I’m not really sure when I met Mel, but it was sometime before kindergarten so our friendship is close to 40 years old. We grew up together, along with a gaggle of close friends. We moved through Bluebirds, Campfire Girls. elementary, junior, and high school as a trusted group of cohorts. Some of us went to college and beyond, and that’s when our little pod disintegrated. We lost contact and faded from each others lives. Except Mel and I kept contact through the years. She had gone through some rough times in high school (drugs, dropping out) but we remain friends. I went away to graduate work, but we remain friends. I haven’t lived on the west coast for 20 years, but our conversations (too few) are as if we talked the previous day.
As far as the oldest friend…that’s a lot tougher. I know a number of people in their eighties and nineties but I would be hard-pressed to call them “friends.” I do, however, love to hear their stories. I know a lot of people will groan (“old folks only talk about their gall bladders!”) but ask them about something that happened in their past and the most amazing stories can come out. Stories about surviving the war or some historic disaster or being at a certain event opens a view of history I had not seen before.
I’ve known my best friend Travis since just before kindergarden. We were friends back then, and became friends again in 7th grade when we were back in the same school. We fell back into the best friend thing very quickly.
My oldest friend is my grandfather. He’s one of the few people I am honored to call family.
I have friends from kindergarten who I still see fairly regularly. At least one I’ve known since about age 2.
As to aged compatriots, I can’t claim much at the moment. Historically, I’ve had several close friends over 90 (including my grandmother, who I classify as a best friend as well as a Mimi; also, Kentucky’s first professional photojournalist.)
Nowadays, my oldest close friend is chronologically in his late 50’s. Psychically, I think he’s younger than I am. I’m envious.
Rereading my last post, I should probably clarify (dammit!)
My grandmother and the photojournalist were two different people.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled thread.
We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I don’t have any friendships that have survived from early childhood. The person outside my family that I’ve known the longest and still have regular contact with is a guy I had a couple of classes with in high school, but who moved in different circles at the time. I moved again just before my senior year of high school, and just before that we began hanging out together more frequently. We ended up going to the same college, so we decided to room together as freshmen. We got to be quite close, despite (or perhaps because of) his taking an RA position in another dorm during our sophomore year. We’ve stayed in touch pretty regularly throughout the fourteen years since college. He’s now in Knoxville, about four hours away, so we generally manage to see one another at least once a year, we talk on the phone every six weeks or so.
The oldest person (again outside of family) that I’d consider a friend is probably the guy who used to own the company I worked for before this one, and he’s only about 60. While our relationship started out as a professional one and was always marked by a fair amount of bickering, I can honestly say I’ve never been around anyone who genuinely cared more about the well-being of the people who worked for him. He’s a very difficult person to get to know, and there’s very little filtering that goes on between the time he thinks something and the time it comes out of his mouth, so he’s always offending someone, but once you get past that he’s an amazingly caring person. I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time around him in a non-work environment by crewing for him on his sailboat during a weekly racing series on a local lake. The company went through a fairly rocky period when he was out of commission for several months recovering from surgery and radiation therapy from throat cancer, and he ended up selling to another company, though he stayed on for a couple of years after that. Eventually, he was forced out by the new ownership; I stayed on for nearly two more years. We still stay in touch, though not as much as I’d like.