I reunited with a Jr. High friend about 8 years ago. We picked up right where we left off. She’s one of my dearest friends. Even though we only see each other 3 of 4 times a year, we are as close as we were when we were kids. I’m so glad I was able to find her. She is wonderful.
Excellent OP, FCM! I reconnected with a couple people last summer at my 30th reunion. Got a couple of Christmas cards from my closest HS friends; I never got around to Christmas cards because I was sick during the time I’d planned to write them, but I’m going to send cards this week. Figure that’s something I can do while I’m recovering from whatever got hold of me this weekend. Also, got to talk to a couple of people I went to elementary school with (I went to a Catholic school, so these were people that I’d known since first grade). That was fun. I only went because (like Mork) I was wondering what had happened to a lot of the people I’d gone to high school with. Didn’t get to talk to as many people as I’d wanted to, but it was fun anyhow. (Plus we had a Dopefest the night before my reunion where I got to meet our very own CelloDude, just before he became a regular MMPer IIRC.)
I keep in touch with only a couple of friends from undergrad. FarAway Best Friend was one of my grad school roommates, but she’s about the only grad school friend I keep up with.
We had a reel-to-reel tape player when I was little, but I’m just enough younger than FCM that we had one of those newfangled cassette players by the time I was in junior high. My brother and his friends used to record some hilarious radio shows.
We’ll miss you lots LiLi. But I understand the getting the internet time under control thing. I seem to have outgrown the blatant over-surfing thing, for the most part, but there are times when I have to pull myself away to get actual stuff done. At that point I tend to limit myself to stopping by the MMP. I haven’t made it into your thread yet because I’m still working on it. I’m thinking I need to focus on being more healthy - I’ve actually caught colds twice in the past 3 months, so that tells me I’m not doing everything I can do. I know I’m not eating as well as I should or getting enough exercise. I’ve got today and tomorrow to figure out the details. I’ll get in and post sometime before Wednesday (maybe that’ll keep me honest). Glad to hear you’ll be stopping by on Sundays, though.
I think it’s really interesting how religions look at atonement and self-sacrifice. (Paging Mika…) Is there anything similar in the Hindu tradition?
Well…gotta get something done today. Glad I took tomorrow off. That almost gives me a full weekend’s worth of time.
Off to be semi-productive.
GT
Great OP, FCM! I lost touch with everyone after high school, even the couple of girls I was in kindergarten with. There is one I would still love to get in touch with, but I’ve never been able to find her. Classmates doesn’t list her at all, even among the missing, so I assume she doesn’t want to be found.
Swampy, I’m sending supporting thoughts your way that you’ll be able to kick the habit.
We have doors! Lowe’s had the 6-panel doors we wanted for $26 each!! So we got 5, then we special ordered the 16" door for the linen closet - that sucker cost $44!
I need to get motivated to slap a coat of paint on the ceiling in the guest room. Easier said than done, tho. I don’t wanna do nuttin’…
swampy, good luck with giving up the evil weed. LiLi, good luck giving up the evil internet. Me, I gave up the whole Catholic thing 20-some years ago for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to spell out here. So Lent is pretty meaningless to me now. All part of being an old grouch, I guess.
A couple of my reunions didn’t work out so well. I’m actually really bothered by one, as she wouldn’t even respond to my emails to tell me why she’s so pissed off. It makes me sad when I remember how close we were as kids. I guess we grew too far apart to bridge it anymore. 
I never went to any high school reunions. It wasn’t a fun time for me, since I was on the Island of Misfit Toys. I keep getting Classmate emails for “Wilbert”, so I don’t know how good it would be at finding people anyways.
LiLi, good luck with the intarweb thing. See you in 40 days.
Hey Dot! Long time no see.
swampy, good luck quitting. I did it eight years ago. Actually, I’ve been quit longer than I smoked now. 
Kalhoun that’s just what happens sometimes. Old friends seem to just drift apart. A few of the people I was close to growing up I don’t see or talk to anymore even though most of ‘em are right there in my hometown. We just don’t have anything in common anymore. BTW, nice to see ya stoppin’ in the MMP! Come back and set a spell whenever ya can.
Thanks for all the good lucks, prayers and stuff on the smokin’ thing. I figure the combination of Lent and being out of work right now (I’m not destitute but I am cheap) will help. Puggy this attempt will be cold turkey. The way I see it, the big thing I’m givin’ up is nicotine, thus I shouldn’t use anything with nicotine in it. I should be a lot of fun to be around for at least a few days, huh? 
ETA: Howdy Dotster! Hope things are goin’ good for ya.
Well, guess I found a little motivation. We just finished sanding the old mud application. **FCD ** is now going to do what we hope will be the final coat of mud. Then I’ll get in there and paint the ceiling. Meanwhile, I have a load of clothes in the washer, and one more to go in order to finish all the dirties. Yay. I also should do our taxes and I know there’s a bill in here somewhere for our last delivery of heating oil - I should prolly find it and pay it, ya think?
My OP has inspired me to track down my friend Mary - she and I were in Acapella Choir together, back in the old days when I sang Soprano I. Her birthday is Saturday, so I’ll send a card/note to her last known address.
Now, if only I could find Craig…
I’m coming up on my 10 year HS reunion this June. :eek: When did that happen?? I’m torn on going. First, since I moved last summer, it’d be a much bigger deal to go. I used to live ~1 hour from where I grew up so I could just drive home and go. Now I’d have to fly out there, find someplace to stay, rent a car, and still drive that ~1 hour. (The airport is near where I used to live, not near my old HS.)
Second, I wasn’t exactly a misfit, but I wasn’t one of the “cool” kids either. I didn’t play any sports, and I wasn’t in band (but I was in chorus) so I was kind of left out of a lot of things. I got along with everyone ok (in my class of 25, which included 4 exchange students) but I didn’t really feel like I fit. I didn’t feel like anyone really understood me until college.
So those are the negatives. On the positive side, 11 out of those 21 (not counting the exchange students here) of us were together from kindergarten. So I knew those people longer than I’ve known anyone since. Most often when I have dreams, I dream about my HS classmates. And it usually makes me feel good to dream or to think about them. Most of them are/were decent people, just not people I have a lot in common with.
I kinda want to go to see what everyone’s doing now, but then again since like 1/2 of them are still in our home town, I know pretty well what many of them are doing through the grapevine. So is it worth the expense and time of a trip back there to see them? Or since I’m not there and so many of them still are, will they still have their “cool kids” group, which I’ll still be on the outside of? I just don’t know what to do.
Anyway, good luck on the quitting smoking, swampy. And we’ll miss you LiLi. But I can understand giving up the internet. It certainly sucks a lot of my time!
Good luck, swampy - 'im indoors gave up smoking several years ago and although he protests that his health has never been as good since then, he knows that he did the right thing. Now that we’re about to have a complete ban on smoking in public places, he’s glad that he doesn’t have to disappear outside the pub every time he wants a crafty puff.
LiLi, if you give up those three hours a day on the Dope, will you have a super shiny sink?
Dang - there were 849 in my graduating class. I know for sure that 2 are dead, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more. Heck, most of the classes I took had more than 25 people in them - ah the joys of being a baby-boomer…
Oh, and at our 10th reunion, the cliques were alive and well. I was disappointed how little some had changed.
Great MMP FCM!
I spent every year of my life in a different school, so I didn’t make many lasting friendships - save for one. When I was in 6th grade my father was stationed in Arizona, and I was firends with a kid named Jim. We moved at the same time and since we were boys, didn’t even think of keeping in touch. In 8th grade my father was assigned to D.C., and I moved there with him. On the first day of school, who should walk in the door and sit down but my buddy Jim from Arizona!
But wait - it gets weird.
In 9th grade I went back to live with my mom in Texas, the last word I had of Jim was that his parent were going to move to Minnesota. I did 10th grade in Florida, and for 11th grade went back to Virginia to live with my dad. First day of school, while I’m walking down the road, who should stop and ask if I want a ride? Jim himself. His parents moved to MN, hated it, and went back to VA. We hung out during 11th grade, and I went to military school for 12th grade. Jim and I lost touch again.
But wait, it gets weirder.
After graduation, I went to GMU, and on the first day of my English 101 class Jim walks in the door. Our sophmore year Jim’s parents moved to Alabama, and he went with them. This time we tried to keep in better touch, but didn’t. We lost touch again.
Now it gets uber-weird.
Last year I went to a security conference for my job. The first day of class, guess who walks in the door? That’s right, my friend Jim.
Now here’s the weird-upon-weird, we’ve also led curiously similar lives:
We both dropped out of college for the military, then went back. We both married Russian women who already had kids. The kids are off by one year (mine are older) and are a boy and a girl. We both work for universities, doing network and server security. We both LARP. We both have Scottish Terriers for pets.
Cue the spooky music.
**welby ** - how can you be sure you’re not Jim? Maybe all these classrooms had mirrors beside your desks…
Just a thought. 
Morning, everybody! Nice OP, FCM. My 10 year reunion was just a few years back, but I didn’t go. I figured that the people that I still want to see are the people I still did see, because many of us didn’t really lose touch. Maybe I’ll go to the 20, but I figured for the 10, I didn’t have much to show for myself, so it wasn’t worth it.
And now, off to search for jobs. Or maybe sit on the couch and watch TV. Whatever.
But is Mrs Jim as scary as WelbyWife? Can she huff just as well?
welby - See, this is about that halfway point during the movie when we learn that Jim has been following your life as closely as he possibly could because he harbors a jealous resentment and always wanted what you had. Now is the point at which his psychosis begins to manifest as he sets about trying to destroy your life so he can become you.
It’s obvious that welby has never seen Single White Female.
It wasn’t a mirrow, after all Jim isn’t nearly as good looking as I am. As for the rest, , now I’m all scared. I’d go out and get a gun, but then he’d get one too. . .
ScareyFaerie: I’m not sure, I’ve never seen her pissed off. I’m leaning towards yes, though. That kind of huffiness isn’t learned, it’s natural.
Cool OP, FCM. I went to two different high schools, and stayed in touch for some years with the only friends I wanted to stay in touch with; but then we lost contact and I’ve not been able to find them since. I did get contacted by another classmate (who I barely remembered, but who obviously remembered me) who put together a whole list of folks, but I’ve moved a couple times since then and have once again lost touch. I have to admit I haven’t tried real hard to stay in touch, either; I’ve changed so much we really have nothing in common any more, I suspect.
And I’ve never been to a reunion – the only reunion notification I even got arrived three days after the reunion, and I’ve never gotten any others. My habit of moving around probably doesn’t help a whole lot. And it’s not like I would have gone anyway. But it would be nice to be remembered.
I was able a couple years ago, though, to have a quick catch-up email visit with a guy who scared me in high school, he was so insanely brilliant. He also had a way of phrasing things that would catch you completely off-guard. The one that sticks in my mind most is the time, out of the clear blue, when he asked, “Can I deflower you?” Yes, that’s right, he said “deflower.” Hee! And I’m afraid my reaction then was the same as probably all of our reactions are, instant laughter. Not conducive to romance, particularly of the deflowering variety. Needless to say, that was the end of our insanely brief romance. But he’s someone who Done Good. About 15 years after graduation, I was sitting in a movie theater when whose name should scroll across the credits but his, as composer/arranger of most of the movie’s music, and in really big letters, too! Since then he’s gone on to do Big Things behind the scenes in the music world; he’s arranged for basically everybody who’s anybody. It’s always fun to see folks do well.
The one person I have stayed in close touch with is a friend who I met my first week of college, at orientation. We’ve stayed very close ever since – in fact, I think it’s this year I’ll be making another trip to Miami for her second son’s bar mitzvah. We’ve both changed a lot, but at this point we’ve got the link of just knowing each other for so many years that we always have a connection no matter what. Plus when I was going through a really bad patch in my life, she was the one friend who stuck around, and that’s the kind of friend you keep, y’know?
I’m off shortly to make my second self-donation of blood for my surgery. This will be the second pint they suck out of me in a week’s time. :eek: Needless to say, I am not driving myself to the hospital. I don’t normally get woozy after donating blood, but two pints in a week? I have no idea how I’ll react. So since Papa Tigs has the day off, he gets elected to be my chauffeur. Lucky him.
Oooo weird thar, Welby!
And, I have to tell scarey faerie: I love “im indoors.” I mean, not 'im, but the phrase. I am going to start calling my husband that and see what he does.