Getting Re-acquainted ....or not

One of my closest friends lives in Portland, Oregon. She works for the airlines and jokingly refers to herself as Martha Stewardess. She comes home to Ireland a few times a year. We first met when we were about 14. We could trade stories all day about boys we positively adored. My Howard Walsh tales are her Dennis McCarthy ones. Her crush of a million years ago recently got married. Even though its about 15 plus years since the glory days of the Dennis crush...I mourned for her!!! I said his new wife must be ugly etc. (How sad are we?!!)

Anyway, when she was home we decided to meet up with a girl who went to High (Secondary) School with us. We were fairly friendly with this girl but never close close if that makes sense. I imagined that we would go down to meet her for an hour and then if conversation started to dry up we would make our escape.

We met this girl and she asked us the usual questions...marital situation, employment, had we any kids and so on. After an initial burst of enthusiasm she lost interest in us. Of course Martha and I reverted to our childhood selves and got giddy. We ordered wine and said silly stuff. I could see this girl's thought process.....how awfully immature are they and so on.

So about an hour in to our meeting the girl announced she had to leave as she was driving up the country for work in the morning. We said our goodbyes and traded numbers safe in the knowledge that she was never going to call us again and vice versa . Then I just giggled aloud in the pub. It was like being dumped at High School. Like being told we didn't fit in to a certain gang. But the good thing was that my 31 year old self didn't want to fit in to her gang.

We had discussed getting older with this girl and I mentioned that it was difficult to get served by the young barman when there was a skinny half naked girl standing next to me. To which she replied "Oh, I have a 22 year old in work who is after me." I thought Martha was going to choke on her drink. I can safely say without an ounce of bitchiness that this girl didn't have a 22 year old after her when she was 22. Ok how mean a thing is that to say but it is fair comment.

I sensed the girl took great delight in my weight gain. She said we looked "pretty much the same" which somehow sounded like an insult. I do look pretty much the same bar the weight and a few wrinkles (ie. not the same) but Martha who was pretty in high school is now fabulous looking.

I imagine that if I met up with someone from High School and they looked significantly better I would say it. Ok you have to be diplomatic about it but you would find some way to pass on the compliment. Which leads me to the startling conclusion that I have grown up over the last 15 years!!!

Anyway, this blog is all over the place. Don't know what I want to say. You here all this rubbish about high school friends being the best and so on. I have a few close friends from that time but the truth is that in any given high school at any time there is only about five people in your class that you actually like. The rest are just acquaintances.

I treasure my really good friends from school. But some people really do belong to the past. Filed under...'friends by circumstance' as opposed to 'friends by choice'.