Thursday, October 30, 2008

Everyone Back In Place

We've finally found Web Keogh.

It seems that Mike and Jen may be bickering a bit on who actually found him, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of us can take some credit in the quest; many have been searching.

It also seems fitting that I mark the occasion with a personal note about how much this has all meant to me over the past couple of months that I've been on facebook.

Throughout grade school and high school I made some of the best friends that anyone could ask for. For about eight years, at various points, these people meant everything to me. We were part of eachother's lives on a daily basis and went through all the wonderful drama and melodrama that kids that age are supposed to go through.

As a parent of a son going in to middle school, I'm starting to re-live it some of that through his eyes, and I haven't been able to stress enough to him how he should savor every moment of the years to come. I want my children to have wonderful experiences, shared with friends they love, just as I did.

A few of those friends I stayed very close with these past twenty years; one of them I even married. John and Maria I've never stopped seeing on a regular basis. Others, like Mike and Steve Johnson, who've been separated by long distances, have drifted in and out through visits, lunches or emails over the years. What I always found notable was that no matter the time that had passed, within five minutes of getting together, it was clear the years really hadn't taken there toll at all.

But friends like Jayne and Andrea...the first friends I ever made at St. Philip's and through highschool may be the only people I never had so much as a disagreement with; Jen Gorman who I got very close to at Spirit and who along with Jenny Smith were the only people I knew who understood what a pain in the ass it could be to have your father teaching in the same school you attend. I regret how we let these friendships completely lapse to the point where we didn't even have a clue about eachother's lives. There's really not a rational reason that this would happen, it merely did.

I feel we've really been given a second chance now. Twenty years later, we have shaped what has become of our lives and now we have found our way on to facebook and we've seem to have fallen back into place with incredible ease...it is the ease of true friends who know how to be comfortable with one another. All of us seem to carry some of the same regrets and all of us want to see how we can move forward.

We're joined on facebook by a whole group of classmates; some of them were also friends, some were merely acquaintences and some we knew little about other than they were a familiar face in a class or a nearby locker. On facebook though, we're adding eachother as friends simply because we recognize the names and because after 20 years, lines around the eyes, a few extra pounds and some lost hairs, we find ourselves truly nostalgic. This is all good.

With few exceptions, at least for me, everyone is back in place. In additon to those I mentioned above, I'm now talking to: Mick, Tommy (who used to be just Tom),Scott, the Steves (Berenato and Monell), Karen, Julie, Michelle, Eric, Tom, Jen M, Brian, Tom, Stacy and Christina. Shit, I hope I didn't leave anyone out. I'm having a blast on a daily basis, re-living old memories and catching up on eachother's lives.

My little core group of close friends has been very lucky; though 20 years have passed, we're all still here and it appears healthy. We've all found eachother again before it was too late. Now it's time to move forward.....

1 comment:

stv364 said...

Well said Bart. Although I could have done without the "few lost hairs" comment.

That was cold, man.

sdm