Tues, Jul. 23
... Where is this going?
Wow... we grow up so quickly. We really do. I think I'm starting to understand a little of what parents mean when they say that time flies, and it seems like no time at all until the baby that was just learning to walk is graduating from high school, or getting married, or having kids of their own. I'm sure it'll get even more crazy as I get older and as time goes on, but right now, I just look back on the last few years and realize how much time has gone by, and how much I've changed, and everyone around me has changed.
High school seems like it was so long ago; life is at such a different place since then. It's kind of odd to think that there are people who have stayed in Strathmore since graduating, who still have the same close friends from school, who are still working in the same places, or living the same places. For me, it wasn't like I had to get out of there, like some people felt they had to, it was just that life took me away from there, and my path has separated so much from high school and a lot of the people there.
In a lot of ways, though, I never was as much a part of the small-town community as some people were. I wasn't a hockey or ringette kid, so I didn't have that basis with most of them. I went to church in Calgary, so that meant that I didn't do a lot of stuff with most people from school on the weekends and stuff. I went to school there from grade 2 on, so it wasn't like I was a "new kid" or anything like that. My dad grew up there and went to school with many of my friends' parents, so I was just as much a "lifer" as they were; my parents worked in town, volunteered at the school, did all that kind of stuff, too. It also wasn't like I didn't have friends, or I was a loner, or completely uninvolved. I was really involved, and I loved school, especially high school. I was just never as typical a Strathmoron as some of the rest of them. I don't know why.
But all that to say that I'm not as in touch with my high school classmates as some people are. The ones I've kept in touch with are my friends from church. They're the ones who are still in my life, and even though I've drifted even from some of them, they're the ones that are there now, or the ones that I see more often and have more of a vested interest in than most people I went to high school with.
I'm still excited for my 10-year reunion, though. It'll be fun to see where everyone's gone in life; to see who actually did marry their high-school sweethearts, who's close to whom, and all kinds of stuff like that. It'll be fun.
This entry is going off on so many different tangents. I started talking about how fast time flies and how fast we all grow up, because I had lunch with Christy today. That was fun, and I had a blast... it was fun to reminisce about some high school memories, and some of the people we knew "way back when," and laugh about how different things are now.
There's something to be said for old friendships that, even when you haven't done anything together for years, are still comfortable and familiar in that way that only old friends can be. Even if there's nothing in common now (not that that's the case with Christy and I), there are always memories and there's always the fact that you can reminisce about things together that other people just can't relate to. It's fun. I like memories. And I like friends.
infinite || abyss
posted at 3:54 p.m.
