Goodbye Friends

I have a friend who, whenever she fills out surveys online, always lists her "best friend" as her husband. I have always subscribed to the belief that relatives and spouses are not considered friends because they have another title that trumps friend. I don't call Rachel my friend, I call her my wife. Grant is not a friend, he's a brother.


But after spending the better part of the last two weeks trying to organize a trip to the beach for my friends and our significant others, I'm starting to think that maybe the reason people list spouses and relatives as best friends is because their friends become less and less a part of their lives as they grow up. It seemed that every time I called my friends, I only managed to connect with a voicemail. Text messages went unresponded to. A few friends did respond promptly, although I got more "I can't make its" than "Sounds good, see you next week!" from the early responders. I got a few "I don't know, I'll get back to yous" only to have them not get back to me until I called them again.

In college, I lived within walking distance of just about every friend I had on the planet. If I wanted to hang out with someone, I'd go find them. It wasn't hard to get people organized for a weekend trip. Hell, you could probably round up 15 people for a spur of the moment trip to the bowling alley in under half an hour. Now, we have to send out emails and phone calls months in advance to even have a chance of hanging out, and even then you know that you're going to hear more than a few "something came up's."

With marriages, relocations, jobs and kids......is it time to just say goodbye to our old friends? Do we go through a "friendless" period until our kids are old enough to make friends of their own? Then we can just piggyback of our kids relationships and cultivate friendships with their parents. My mom goes on at least one weekend trip a year with her three best friends from high school. Granted, they all live in the Portland area, but still...that's almost 40 years of hanging out. My dad and his best friends get together for lunch every Tuesday. I haven't seen JR since November 10th. . I don't think I've seen Steve since November either. I last saw Colin at Christmas. I haven't hung out with Joel since his birthday at the end of January.

Don't get me wrong, I love spending time alone with Rachel. It might be my favorite thing to do actually. I'm extremely happy with my life, and I have nothing to complain about. And really, I'm not complaining about not seeing my friends. I'm just sad that this is a realization of life. I know that I can make new friends that live closer to me. If I asserted myself, I could probably find a few friends in the neighborhood. Point is that I don't really WANT new friends. I like the ones I have now.

I just wish we still all lived in Finley Hall and could decide we wanted to play some volleyball on the sand court next to Dixon, and 10 minutes later be playing a 5 on 5 game. Of course there's no court there anymore, but you get the idea.