Past as Present

I met up with a childhood ‘friend’ last night.

I say ‘friend’ because I actually wasn’t really his friend- he was my neighbor and was four or five years younger than I was (he is actually four years younger, I discovered recently).

I know I’ve written blog posts about growing out of old childhood friendships… evolving in different directions, new priorities replacing the old ones… naturally progressing, changing and redefining these acquaintances from another time.

And then there are the people with whom you reconnect and they may not know know you, but they know you. They saw you and interacted with you at your most unattractive (as in my case, I was in the tweens – my most awkward phase ever), or in your early years.

Think about it. So many of you out there have kids. Kids from 2-8 or 10 years of age and the people they meet now, they can stay friends with, or lose and re-acquaint later in life? Kind of a crazy thought.

And so this was a little crazy. I hadn’t seen this cat (from what I remember) since I was about fourteen or so. And I’m one hundred percent sure we had nothing in common back then-  other than our street address. Now that we’re both in our thirties, adults living in L.A., away from our hometowns, we actually have more in common now. And a lot is different too. It’s so bizarre seeing a human in two absolutely different stages in a lifetime- and not a gradual setting.

We talked about old neighbors and our parents and families, because we’d seen them for fractions of our lives, and one day, never saw them again. It is a strange thing to really think back to your time as a kid and how you viewed the world back then. I could see in his eyes the same kid who used to play across the street, but I see them differently now, wiser, more lived-in.

If you ever get the chance- whether through a reunion, family, or even Facebook- to see someone in person who has last known you as a child, it is a very interesting and unique experience. Kinda crazy cool, if you ask me.