My son recently graduated sixth grade, and it’s a big time of transition for him. He’ll be going to a new school for seventh grade. New building, new teachers, new classmates. No guarantees that he will have classes with, or even see, any of his current friends from school. At eleven, almost twelve years old, this is his world. His forty something dad, however, is all too aware that social resets happen throughout life. The neighborhood kids never see each other again after one moves away. Your best friend from work becomes a stranger after one of you gets a new job. Or, in my experience, one summer day was the last time I saw my high school friends.
Much like my son’s fears, I went into seventh grade without my previous friends. I had two close friends in sixth grade, and both of them were held back. Seventh and eighth grade were on a different floor of the school, and that was enough back then to lose touch with each other. I started hanging out with a kid I knew from Boy Scouts, but we had never really hung out before. A new kid moved to town and joined our group. As soon as I saw him trying to imitate popular comic artists I knew we would be friends. Come high school, another kid joined us and I never heard of him hanging out with anyone else in junior high. Maybe he was a loner. A fifth switched friend groups halfway through freshman year and joined our lunch table. No idea what happened in his original friend group but he fit in with our awkward geeky collective.
There’s a lot of vagueness to this friendship. I remember everyone’s names, and I remember sitting together at lunch every school day. But really that was it. I went to one of their homes after school a couple times. Just to play video games and read comics. I think I talked to another one on the phone once when he was sick and out of school for a bit to see how he was doing. That was it. It was an era pre social media and pre smart phones. We talked in school, but as soon as school was over we didn’t exist to each other. After school I would see my neighborhood friends that were in other schools or other grades. Or I would be deep into my books, or watching a VHS (nothing’s changed there).
Really, we were work friends. Someone that made the Monday to Friday 8-2 shift more bearable. But never to interact outside of that window. I can’t remember who was going where after our senior year. I went to the local community college. One of the guys joined the Navy. I really don’t know about the other three. College? Work? No clue. So imagine my surprise when I was invited to a graduation party in July.
One, I didn’t even know anyone had my phone number. Two, none of them were invited to my party the night of my graduation. I had many of the friends I hung out with outside of school over, but none of the ones I sat with in school. Third, what are we doing?
I have no clue who picked me up. Someone must have because I didn’t have a car or even my license at the time. We drove up to some town along the St. Lawrence River because one of the guys was given permission to borrow his parents’ boat for the day.
Now, I’ve been in fishing boats before, operated by some adult in the family as a fun activity for the kids. But I’ve never gone out on the water with friends. We weaved around hundreds of the Thousand Islands. Gazed up from underneath the same named bridge. We pulled up to small towns along the United States and Canadian borders, tied up the boat, and walked ashore for a bit. We were blasting the best rock songs from 1996 and wow, does sound travel so far over water. Our captain knew a hidden cove with one of the most amazing swimming spots I’ve ever been to in my life. No one else around. We jumped off the boat into the water countless times. We had a private beach with no one else around. This was the one and only time that all of us spent time together outside of school, and it was so much fun I still think of it to this day.
There’s not a chance I would ever find that beach again. I’ve never been out on a boat like that since. Nearly 30 years later, I’ve never run into any of them either in person or online.
So, my son, there will be friends who disappear from our lives through no fault of our own. Locations change. Schedules change. Memories are forever. Don’t think of it as an ending. Think of it as the dawn of new friendships and new memories. But first, there’s nothing prettier than a sunset over water.
