just this morning (well, at 11:30) a friend from grade school woke me up to tell me how it's raining so much in the northeast that he can't get the boat out. i never made it to the phone to commiserate (blame his boat's combustion engine for causing global warming which creates the rain that's preventing him from enjoying his boat), but i'll return his call later when i'm not feeling quite so cynical.
i had lots of friends growing up. probably a tight group of 10 or 15 within a loser group of 40. grew up in small town. our 30-year class reunion last thanksgiving brought about 90 of us, about 70% of our class. everyone had a great time.
i was a latchkey kid, both parents worked during day and were gone many a long weekend. so our house was the party house. sometimes my brother's party would coincide with mine. a few times we had 40 to 60 people--some we didn't even know--show up. it was a very fun time. from that period i still have 3 good friends who i talk to on a regular basis and many others who i enjoy when i see them every so often even now.
also had a ton of friends in college and after that. i had moved to florida with my parents in the mid 70s. my house again became the party house. and then college was, of course, a blast. boy did i have fun. after college, back in south florida, a gay bar opened in town and a group of about 20 of us became regular partying friends. that was in the 80s and i still have 2 very good friends from that.
my niece/nephews don't have the social structure i had when i was growing up. my high school had 700 people in the entire school. now they have up to 3,000 kids and the siblings go to different "magnet" schools. how do you ever get to know even your school friends among all that.
the neighborhoods are different here. the times, i suppose or at least they say, are different. when i grew up we walked everywhere. you didn't think anything of going across town to visit friends. my brother's kids are only driven. they have a few friends in sameville (their "perfect" housing development neighborhood where every house has the same setbacks, same roof, same colors, same pool).
so their kids don't have the opportunities to make friends like we did. also, my brother, remembering what a delinquent he was, doesn't let his kids get away with our childhood fun. his kids aren't even allowed to have friends in the house when parents are not there as well. i don't know how they will cope later in life. maybe they will let loose and go nuts or get stuck in their shell. hopefully they will be ok.
i have quality friends now but not by a long shot the quantity of friends i used to enjoy. i've tired of entertaining. i no longer have the inclination to clean up after an impromptu gathering of 20 of us so that my parents wouldn't even suspect we'd just trashed the house.
i've lost some very dear friends to death and others to life. i've found some friends good only for fair weather and others who call when it rains. i very much enjoy my alone time but i sometimes think it would have been nice to have someone to retire with. and i don't yet know what it will be like to travel alone.
but i have survived well the loss of those who i grew closest too. my partner, my best friend, my parents, my grandparents, my favorite uncle, many various others. and i have come to learn that regardless of how many friends we have and for how long we keep them or how close we get to them, we really are, ultimately, as has been said, ships passing in the night.
