strangers again

  I was thinking about old friends this morning. Mostly I am thinking about those I knew many years ago and we have gone separate ways. We have been doing a little thing called living. Choices made, circumstance answered, loves and lives lost, but those old friends remain. They are the ones you will never forget, the friends of your childhood. Together you grew, you learned, you made mistakes. But the thought I had was concerning a particular person, my oldest friend. I've come to realize I've known him so long we have become strangers again. And with that thought I wonder?

 You see I had mailed him a letter this year for Christmas. That was something different as we usually talk about twice a year or so. I've mailed him a Christmas card every year. I did get a note back, containing an old photograph he had taken of me over fifty years ago. The only words written said, thanks for the letter. As always it was signed, your friend. That struck an odd chord with me, the note, not the your friend part. It is rather unlike him to not include some words. I began to think, it has been a number of years since we have seen each other. The last time we did get together we didn't do anything but relive old times. I expect that is the normal course of events with old friends like that, the past is now what we have in common. In that I felt a tinge of sadness. How little we really know of each other lives in the last forty years or so. certainly a lot of living has taken place. 

 I wonder if that isn't part of what is wrong in the world today. Years ago you grew up in a certain area, got a job, raised your family. and was buried there. That was the normal way. The people you went to school with, your friends, your family, the merchants were all familiar to you, if not your friends. Friends did change over time as you grew. Still your friends knew your backstory, knew something of who you were. You knew those folks all your life, they were never strangers. That was true even when you only knew of them by reputation or gossip. But today, today that isn't the case. Today all of that is the exception rather than the rule. at least I think for rural communities it is. Oh I'm certain there are exceptions, farm families and such, where the kids stay home and run the family business. I just think that is getting to be a rare thing. With all this push for a collage degree finding employment in the sticks is very hard. It's a fact, you don't need a PhD to slop the hogs and feed the chickens. You really don't need a degree in agriculture to grow corn. As a result we have spread out across the land, are old friends have become strangers once again. We did share the commonality of youth, I wonder would we share the commonality of life? That is to say, besides the past what do we have in common? Can the past support the future, or even today? I do wonder about that. 

 I'm thankful for Facebook. That medium has reconnected me with some of those old friends. It's good to see them. I enjoy their pictures, their bragging about grandchildren, their views on the world. I find some haven't changed all that much. I've also discovered some I thought I knew, I didn't know at all. I wonder what life has taught them? For me Merle Haggard kinda summed it up when he wrote, "I guess everything does change except what you choose to recall" and I certainly enjoy my memories. Old friends are the only ones you can share those memories with. Maybe that is what is missing today, old friends, that haven't grown old together. Today there are just too many that have known each other so long they have become strangers again.