You Can’t Make New Old Friends

I have lived in Los Gatos for seven years and love it here. But I have to say that when one of my friends, who has lived here her whole life tells us funny things about other lifelong Los Gatos friends, I am jealous.

For example, when J talks about M (now both in their 40s, wonderful parents, successful career people, respected members of the Los Gatos community) throwing a milkshake at her when they were in the eighth grade in the cafeteria at Fisher Middle School, I long to get back together with my childhood friends and reminisce. For as marvelous as it is to make new friends and I am all for that, you just can’t make new old friends. Old friends, especially the best old friends, add a special kind of zesty layer to life.

Facebook, Google Plus and Linkedin are all excellent ways to reconnect with old friends. Over the past two years I have reconnected with a number of old friends. But it is not just meeting online for a chat or seeing pictures of their families that has made a difference to me, it has been meeting in person. 

In January I went to Wisconsin to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. In advance of the trip I contacted some friends that I haven’t seen for years, actually for decades. These are girls I first met when I was 10. They were keen to get together for lunch. There is nothing like sitting down with people you haven’t seen for a long, long time and saying to them, “tell me about your life” and then listening to what they have to say. There was great interest, great concern, a beautiful reciprocation and best of all, no judgement. We sat at the table at the restaurant for more than three hours and talked and laughed and talked and laughed some more. 

We talked about our families, our jobs, our husbands, our houses, our lives. We talked about our travels and our dreams, our successes and our failures. We talked about the time I rode my bike fast to my friend’s house and then burst into tears of joy when I told her my mom was going to have a baby. We talked about the way we used to sneak out in the middle of the night to go visit our long-haired boyfriends when we were in high school. We talked about the parties, the proms, the lake, the cars, the fashions and more about the parties (there wasn’t a lot to do in Wisconsin during the long, cold winters). We could have easily stayed for another three hours. 

More recently, I managed to track down an old friend from Dayton Hudson. I worked as a buyer at Dayton Hudson Department Stores for nine years after I graduated from college. My husband and I are taking our youngest daughter for a sight-seeing trip to New York City and this old friend of mine was the first one I thought of. While working for Dayton Hudson, we had gotten to know each other well and spent time traveling together for our jobs. Sticking with a career in retail for years, he is now the president of a large woman’s retail chain that has stores worldwide.

I tried finding him through the usual social media outlets but failed. I took a chance and sent off an email to the marketing communications contact at his company. Within an hour I had an email entitled “You found me!” and it began like this: “Omg ... I have thought of you so often. Feel free to call me on my cell. I'd love to catch up. So great to be in contact again!” This made me smile all week. 

I talked to him a few days later and arranged for our families to meet for brunch and shopping while we’re in New York and I can’t wait. We laughed together on the phone about the office we shared in the sub-basement of the old downtown Daytons’ store in Minneapolis and how we did all our work sans computer, writing out long worksheets and complicated order forms for our store purchases. We talked about when the sewer pipe sprung a big leak above the desk of one of our co-workers and when our fashion director played a cassette tape of Footloose music so we would focus on the related clothing trends. Wow, that was a long time ago! 

Most importantly, meeting up with a few of these old friends has made me think about and appreciate the profound impact these people have had on my life. Without their friendships, their support and their laughter, my life would be substantially less rich. I am so happy to have reconnected with them. I encourage you to reach out, surround yourself with the most fun people in your life because although you can always find great new friends, there is just something brilliant about old friends. And you can never make new old friends.