Friend Impressions

My dear college friend Suzanne texted me today that she was playing golf with a girl who grew up in Wilton, the town I grew up in. Although her golf friend was two years younger than I am, she listed a bunch of names of people she thought I might have known back in the day.

When I say back in the day, I am talking about the time before man walked on the moon -Ancient history.
As I read the names a couple sounded somewhat familiar, like maybe I did not know that exact Spangler, but perhaps a brother whose name I could not remember, or those Earle girls, twins maybe, I just can’t place their faces. Since I left Wilton after ninth grade and went off to the unheard of thing of boarding school I more or less forgot everyone I went to junior high or elementary school with. I did not have those high school bonding experiences with the people so they probably don’t remember me and I don’t remember them.
With the exception of a few names of people who did outrageous things, like were horrible bullies, or the mean girl I saw hitch hiking pregnant, or a boy I might have had a grade school crush on, I doubt I can recall any of those kids from my childhood. How different that is from people I went to boarding school with. Not only could I look at a picture of them today and tell you who they are, where they were from and where they went to college, it would not matter if I had not seen them in thirty years, their face would still be familiar to me.
I am eternally grateful that my father noticed how bored I was in ninth grade and suggested I go to boarding school. It was a fabulous time in my life where I made so many life long friends whom I still cherish. It really hit me today, as Suzanne was listing of names of people who grew up in my same small town as me and I probably went to school with for ten years, yet they made little to no impression on me, that I really learned to be a good friend in boarding school.
When I went to college in my freshman year, my floor mates used to joke that I could not go anywhere where I did not know someone. That came from my far flung boarding school friends. I see that same phenomenon with Carter and her camp friends. Wherever we go in North Carolina she is sure to know someone who went to camp with her. It is nice to know people who you grew up with, but it is much more useful to be able to go many places and find and old friend wherever you are. I guess if I went back to Wilton I would be OK since I know an old boarding school and college friends who live there now, but as for people I grew up with, probably not, they just did not make that big a friend impression on me.