The Old Days

I had the privilege of having dinner with four of my life long gal pals last night. We’ve been friends for over 30 years – can you believe that? WOW. It’s not often that we all can find a night that everyone can make it, without kids, during the week, for 3 hours of “us” time. But we made it work – and it’s probably the first time we’ve done it in 10 years. Since kids started arriving on the scene, schedules are just too hard to coordinate. We see each other all of the time for other events, but not often do we get the one on one time with just the old high school girls. We used our girlfriends impending twin boy delivery in May as a great excuse to get together, celebrate and see her growing belly.

Our discussions started out as catching up on the kids, parents, home life etc. And by the end of the night, we were all competing for talk time to bring up one more story out of the archives. We were debating whether OUR kids would be able to get away with what we got away with over all of those years. Some of our antics are almost unspeakable, others are the same as everyone else’s growing up. Nonetheless, we did all agree that we are lucky to be alive to discuss these stories as many of them gave us some pretty bad odds that we would even make it to be 30 some-things.

Since 3 out of 5 of us married people we went to high school with, many of our stories included our spouses before we got old and got married. Which sort of makes it even funnier. My girls were CRAZY way back when – and based on our New Years Eve celebration a few weeks ago, I must say that we have not changed all that much since then. We can still get our dance and drink on when we try!

We recalled many stories that were gut busting funny – like the time that J arrived at school (and stayed the entire day) under the influence and never got busted; and the time that R and I lied to a teacher and left school for a supposed school errand and went to the beach to lay out (and got busted by the way); and the Sunday afternoon when about 25 of us (all varsity athletes) got a keg and drove out on school property (on the baseball field) and had a co-ed field hockey game using the equipment we broke into the school after hours to get; or the many parties that we attended at “the temple” which was the area underneath an overpass on US Route 50; or all of the nights we spent at R’s house sneaking out of her basement with our boyfriends while her Mom was sleeping upstairs; and the time that L was driving us all and we almost flipped her car as we swerved to miss one of our teachers in her car; or when D stole a pack of sprees from 7-eleven and tried to blame L as the cops showed up at her front door; ah, the list goes on.

As I arrived home I noticed the local paper from a night or two ago sitting on the table with the headline being that one of the high schools had to close down a dance last weekend for “drinking and dirty dancing”. I had to laugh. Times are so different now – by virtue of the fact that I’m actually saying this out loud, makes me an official old person. But time passes and I guess that’s what happens. We grow old, and grow up. We become much like our own parents. We struggle with the toughest job there is in my view – raising kids in today’s world. The choices and decisions that kids now days have to face seem so daunting to me, even as an adult. As we all venture down this unknown path, doing the best that we can, it’s absolutely wonderful to have old friends to lean on who you’ve known forever. And even better, our kids will grow up and old together too.

Aside from the parenting perspective, it’s wonderful to have such awesome long time girl friends who are part of your life after all of these years. Our relationships have been forged over time and they will be there forever. Although we all have ventured in our different directions in life, we all come back to our core every so often. It’s not often that you stay connected so well with so many childhood friends and have the opportunity to live close by for frequent visits. We’re lucky to have each other aren’t we?