The Wonder Years

The truth about growing up is that there's a bit of sad irony involved. What I mean is that when we were kids we couldn't wait to be adults, but now that we are I think most of us wish we could go back. Or at least most of us wish that we were still free to live like we did when we were kids. As kids adulthood seemed so appealing. There were all sorts of things, like driving for example, that we couldn't wait to grow up and do. As fate would have it, now it's childhood (i.e. growing up) that we glorify. Unfortunately, we can't go back in time and be kids again, but every once in a while we are lucky enough to get a taste of what our formative years were like.

This past weekend I went to Long Island and met up with some of my friends from high school. They were all going to the Red Sox/Yankees game on Saturday and ironically enough I was working on that very game from a studio in CT, but I still made the trip down to hang out with them on Friday night. Two friends drove in from the city of hopes and dreams, another friend took a flight in from Boston after work while still dressed in his business attire, and two others live and attend medical school together in LI.

Now even though driving through the NYC area during rush hour on a Friday may have been one of the worst decisions that I've ever made, I'm glad that I went. I hadn't seen or really even talked to any of these friends in months, so it was great to hang out with them for a few hours.

As old friends often do, we sat around and caught up with each other's lives while throwing back a few cold ones. Naturally we mixed in plenty of stories about our old high school days and as we laughed and reminisced it literally felt like we were all still 17. In fact, after a verbal exchange with the lone female of the group (one of the med school students) one friend remarked that it was comforting to know that some people haven't changed a bit. Shortly thereafter he and I discussed how much time had passed since we all really became friends in 10th grade (8 years).

This conversation has stuck with me ever since. First and foremost, I couldn't have agreed any more with his comment. It's a good feeling when someone acts in the very way that you remember them. Knowing that they are being themselves puts a smile on your face. Too often in the real world we have to deal with people that put up a facade of formalness to impress their boss/co-workers. I mean, I get that you should always be conscious of putting your best foot forward in the workplace, but some people are just so uptight that they never let their guard down and their personality out.

Now even though I too got that sense that none of us had really changed since highschool, I’m quite certain that we all actually have to some degree. Whether we know it or not, our environment and varied life experiences are constantly shaping us into the people that we are today. Our personalities are by no means static. For example, I am unquestionably older, wiser, and perhaps even a bit more mature than I was in high school.

We get the sense that our old friends haven’t changed because we are able to recognize a few personality traits that they still exhibit. For example, I am still both unbearably loud and arrogant. Maybe these are a few of the fundamentals of my personality and only the extraneous aspects of my personality change. I don’t really know for sure.

"We did not change as we grew older, we just became more clearly ourselves."

As I thought more and more about this I realized that while the roots of our personality may never change, virtually all other aspects of our lives inevitably will. And change is scary. Change brings new people, new places, and new challenges. If we are in a place long enough we start to develop a routine and we get comfortable with it, but change takes us right out of that comfort zone. That's why we get butterflies in our stomach on job interviews, on our first day at a new job, and when we first go off to college.

Believe it or not change happens even faster in the real world. People you grew up with move to different cities. They work in different industries. They have roommates, make new friends. They date people you've never met, or let alone heard of. They get caught up with their new and busier lives and find it harder and harder to find the time to cultivate old friendships.

It's just something that happens. Friendships fade. Once you are out of college the ties you have to your old friends begin to fray. You don't keep in touch with half the people you thought you would. High school and college gave us all the same structure. The process was something that we all had in common. It was something for us to bond over. Once the structure is gone, people start veering off in completely different directions.

If you stop and think about it, it should really come as no surprise. The future brings with it a multitude of life altering choices and we will undoubtedly choose drastically different paths than many of our peers.

Luckily I'm still young enough where the ties to my old friends are still intact, but I know that big changes are on the horizon. Once people start getting married and having kids (we aren't that far away from this becoming a reality) their lives will become totally different. Their values will change. They'll yearn for the little free time that they had in their early 20's. In most cases, they'll probably turn into slightly different variations of their parents. As time marches ahead it's important to remember that people's lives might change, but rarely do the people.

"The friends who grew up with you deserve a special respect. The ones who stuck by you shoulder to shoulder, in a time where nothing was certain, all life lay ahead, and every road led home." -The Wonder Years

A quick aside, am I the only one that was the under the impression that Winnie Cooper was Asian?

Your friends from highschool, and certainly many of your friends from college, know you right down to the core of your personality. Something about this kind of relationship is able to stand the test of time. I think I've mentioned this before, but during the last few weeks of my senior year of college one of my friends said, "You're the type of kid I could not talk to for 3 years, but if we ran into each other we'd just pick right up and not miss a beat." Now I'm paraphrasing of course, but when he originally said it I wasn't sure how to take it. Only after the fact did I realize that it was actually quite a compliment.

"The truth is, you have your oldest friends in life, and then you have everyone else. Nothing will trump your oldest friends. Any amount of time can pass without you feeling as if you've grown apart because, really, you can't. It's like a plant. You just have to water it every so often and you're good." -ESPN.Com's Bill Simmons

Even if we haven't seen our oldest friends in weeks, months, or years we still somehow fall right back into the same rhythms of conversation. We interact just like we always have. The conversations may have changed, but the people having them are relatively the same. And this, indeed, is comforting.