Old Friends

It is amazing to me to be able to go without seeing a friend for years at a time, but when you do see one another again, it is like time has not passed.

At this point, most of my friends that I socialize with on a regular basis are people I work with. We have lots of time and opportunity to plan gatherings, and similar schedules which help as well. We spend time together in the mornings, before the real day begins. We eat lunch together everyday. And afterwork when we are in need of conversations with other adult humans, we are often congregating in someone's room again. This is a lot of quality time and it doesn't even include the sporting events or getting together before or after them to eat and chat. I am very fortunate to work with an amazing group of people who I like so much that we even get together during the summer, or on weekends during the school year.

But today I am talking about the people it is harder for me to see. The friends from high school and college that I am still in contact with (thanks primarily to facebook), the friends that I never really lost contact with, but do not get to see often. I have friends that live my town, and we will run into each other at Target, Walmart or swim meets, but it is very difficult to seem to coordinate schedules to get together. And I have friends all over the country it seems, that when we talk on the phone, you might as well find the cell phone charger and call it a night, because it will be at least an hour and a half most of the time.

It is amazing to me that knowing people well (and sometimes for fairly short time spans) can result in these lasting connections that when you are together time has not really passed. There is no growing apart because you have such a strong shared history. And in most cases we didn't really have that much in common. I don't cross-country ski, or hike, or pee outside, or travel the world like many of my friends, but we have something stronger, we think I am awesome -- jk -- we share a similar sense of humor and somewhat similar view of life.

To all my friends, I love you. I hope you are happy, and I hope to see you soon.