Deliberate Digressions

Well, things did not go as planned during the visit to NYC, and I only got to meet up with a few old friends. The meeting that I was most looking forward to (with a junior high school friend that I had once had a crush on) didn’t happen, but I did manage to meet up with friends for high school, college and my old writing workshop days.

Interestingly, it was my old high school friends who seemed the least changed. It could be that this particular group had stayed in touch with each other and continued to see each other regularly, but it seemed to me that except for the addition of a couple of kids, they still acted the same as they had nearly 20 years ago when I knew them in high school. They still told the same kinds of jokes, their provincial viewpoints, even their interaction with each other seemed unchanged. Conversations with them revolved around what fun activity they could plan for the coming weekend.

In contrast, my college and writing friends seemed to have mellowed with age and seemed much more reflective. Our conversations centered around how we had changed over the years, the decisions we faced in raising our kids, and reflections on our job/life choices and the impact that those choices have had on our careers/lives.