Friends

I have had trouble in writing the next chapter in my story about how much fun it has been to grow up as a Baby Boomer.  The subject of how coming home from college the first year for Christmas vacation has caused a lot of thought about friends. I think the old saying about how you can't go home again sort of kept running through my mind.

The really funny part about writing about friends and home has come at a time when I have been spiffing up the house for a high school class party.  By a stroke of luck a high school friend posted on Facebook this morning "You never forget the neighborhood kids you grew up with". How true not only of the neighborhood kids but all the kids you spent the first eighteen years of your life with.

I guess I was lucky in the fact that I did get to stay in my hometown until I graduated from high school.  After that it was fifty years of moving all over the country and only staying in one place for a few years.  Yes, I always made lots of new friends, had many great experiences but it is difficult to form the bonds that growing up with the same group of people forms. 

My twentieth class reunion was the first one I attended and I have only missed a couple since.  It is very hard to describe how it felt to go back and see all the people I had grown up with. Maybe all the moving around made it feel like I had actually come "home". There is something very special about being able to see someone you haven't seen in twenty or even fifty years and feel like you just talked to them yesterday. 

The first eighteen years of our lives maybe the most challenging years if you stop and think about it.  There is so much to learn in how to make and maintain friendships. So many insecurities and a lot of disappointments that seemed huge at the time. It is funny but at the last class reunion one of the girls said it was difficult for her to read my stories since I had so much fun growing up and she didn't.  I had to laugh as she was one of those girls I wanted to be like since she was pretty, popular and a good student. One of the boys whose voice I recognized before I even saw him told me he always wanted to ask me for a date but never did because I was cute, popular and one of the rich kids (not hardly). We all did have our little insecurities.

The really great part of reconnecting with my high school class is that through the years I have gained friendships with classmates I did not know that well back then. I feel bad for those class members who don't come to our class parties.  Not everyone has great memories of high school but I think they need to realize that the people you grew up with are the best friends you can have. We share so many experiences, good and bad, that we are all bonded for life.

Maybe "home" is not a location on the map or a house on a street but the shared memories and fun times you have had with those you grew up with.  Every time I get the chance to see all my classmates I feel like I have gone home.