On old friends

At what point do friends, past or present, actually become old friends? I suppose you could peg it to their chronological age, but I have several longtime friends who are younger than I am. Should it be determined by using my age? That would make all of my friends, “old friends”. That hardly seems fair. There are several friends who I was actually in contact with for a relatively short period of my life. Yet, they seem to have a permanent place in my definition of friendship.

I recently had the unexpected pleasure of chatting with some old friends. I have not seen some of them for a very long time. It amazed me how quickly I re-discovered the little things that I liked about them. On Saturday, I chatted on the phone with a woman who was my best friend when I was a senior in high school. I don’t think I’ve spoken with her since she and her mom came halfway across the country to attend my wedding decades ago.

My family had moved to a different city during the summer before my senior year. It was going to be truly lousy to end high school as a “new kid” senior. I met her soon after enrolling in my new high school. Luckily for me, she and eventually, her whole family decided to “adopt” me. Since she knew everyone in school and everyone knew her, it made it a lot easier to find a place in my new school’s social scheme. It turned out to be a better than expected senior year for me with lots of good times and great memories. She was a friend in the very best sense of that word.

At first, our phone conversation seemed a bit strained. It didn’t help that we talked in the morning. We are both still night people. I could sense us trying to find the old rhythms. The easy exchanges of the past had become lost in the haze of years. As we caught up with the news of our respective families, she happened to laugh. “Yeah, now I remember”. I always liked that laugh.