Re-Visiting Friends From High School

Re-Visiting Friends From High School

A slippery slope.

I went to a small private high school and graduated with a class of 40. A lot of us went to the same school since elementary school, so you probably could say that we knew each other well. Knew that Robert was once pimply. Understood that Natalie was once fat. Remembered that George couldn't remembered his nines times tables in the third grade.

It's strange to have a bunch of people who you don't really know anymore remember who you used to be.

The city where I grew up isn't small. It's grown to almost 500,000 in the years since I left, but that still doesn't prevent me from running into the people I knew from high school every time I return for a vacation or a holiday. This isn't an uncommon phenomenon--whether you're from a small town or a huge city, it seems that some forces bring you together with the people you don't want to see.

I ran into a huge group of my high school classmates at a bar in my hometown on Friday nights. A few of them still live there, and spend tons of time together eating and, I suppose, reminiscing about high school. More still look forward to holiday break times so they can see their friends from high school again.

They said that I looked good. They wondered why they hadn't seen me since high school.

I remembered when a now-beautiful blonde and I dressed up in goofy costumes for Halloween in the seventh grade. I remembered when a now-bulked-up boy was a scrawny freshman who couldn't find a date. I'm sure that they would remember how at our high school graduation the superlative about me was that I couldn't go without my coffee, but they wouldn't have known how mad that anecdote made my mother afterwards.  

It's not that I didn't like who I was in high school. I feel pretty good about my teenaged decisions.

Instead, I think the trouble that I have with running into old friends from high school is that they still expect me to be that girl, and to some extent, I turn into that old girl again. I'm nastier; I'm less confident; I'm less positive. I have different interests and better friends and a life away from this city.

I wonder--did they love high school so much that they never want to outgrow it? And seeing them, I wonder--did I love college so much that I never want to outgrow? I live near all of my friends from college, and I can't imagine having better friends than I do now.

They remind me of who I was, and maybe that scares me a bit. But what's their reason for loving it so much? Did we peak at 18? At 22?