What happened to your high school friends?

With a few exceptions, they're mostly loosers who still live in our shitty hometown. I can confirm this, because I've become facebook friends with a handful of them, which allows me to see pictures of them getting drunk at the American Legion, which is about the only thing to do in that town after 9 p.m.

 

My best friend from high school and I are still very close. We have been through it all together, so we keep in touch.
He got out of our hometown but before he left he got married and knocked up a stripper. They moved to a bigger town about three hours away and she became a huge, for lack of a term that fits her better, a whore. They split but are still legally married. She moves boyfriends in and out of her house but will seek out and beat the crap out of any girl that even thinks of smiling at my friend. She had a kid from her first marriage, but that kid calls my friend daddy, which is the real sticking point of them getting a divorce (he doesn't want to let the other daughter go). He works at a gay bar (he's bisexual) and makes decent money, but he has constant drama around him. I worry about him all the time, but I know he will take care of himself and the kids as well as he can.
He is listed in my cell phone as "Drama" my wife and I are listed in his as "My conscience"
Everyone else from high school can just go to hell, they sucked.

 

I'm only really in touch with three people from HS. One is a stay-at-home mom with three kids (oldest turns 5 this Friday). She married another guy i went to HS with, and he's currently unemployed but going back to school. They're very active in their church. My other friend is a paralegal.

 

Update: My friend JUST called me to say that he almost died in a fight last night. A guy had a rope around his neck in an attempt to kill him. I'm worried about his safety, but he said that everything would be ok.
I wish that SOB would just move back here and get his shit together, but he just won't. He loves the damn drama.

 

Just went and viewed the photos from the all-class alumni golf outing. Recognized two people -- a guy I went to grade school and high school with and the walking piece of pigshit current football coach, who didn't go to school there but could die tomorrow and I'd fly home to piss in his coffin.

 

For a long, long time, I ran as far away from my high school as I could.

But as I got older, I started circling back a little bit.

Three years ago, my HS best friend and I reconnected. He works for a computer company, is divorced and has two kids and a granddaughter.

He also is the lead vocalist and harmonica player in a very good local blues band.

His guitar player is the same guy who taught me to play guitar in high school, and his brother is an associate dean at Northwestern.

Earlier this year, I found my high school sweetheart, someone I dated for 2 ½ years and was madly in love with back in the day.

Her first husband was a Julliard-trained pianist who nearly beat her to death after he developed a bad drug problem. One of the scars on her face is from when he put a cigarette out on it.

Her second, whom she is divorcing now, was a drunk, but at least a harmless one.

She also had a major brain aneurysm that she was only given a 30 percent chance of surviving. And yet she did in fact survive.

The good news is her kids are grown and by all accounts, good, solid people, and in the face of difficult circumstances, she’s moving on with her life.

I know a few others still on a more peripheral basis — the usual mix of stories.

The stunning blonde prom queen in my neighborhood ended up marrying a doctor and moving to Israel, while a stoner I knew got busted for drugs in Texas, got turned in jail and when he got out committed suicide by driving his truck full speed into a freight train.

The creepy thing to me is that on our anniversary reunion page, 17 of my classmates already are dead. Seventeen.

Which at the risk of pontificating, the death count is another reminder that the clock is running and to get out there and enjoy life.

It’s too short to squander on petty b.s.

 

they are all locked in my closet

 

I graduated in a class of about 300. I was one of about 25 to try college and one of less than ten to finish. If I want to see some of my old classmates when I visit home, I can go to Wal-Mart, where most of them hand out stickers and end every sentence in a question. There are several that are dead

I keep up with about four or five people I've known since kindergarten. Facebook has brought that number up somewhat. I've accepted friend requests, but haven't felt compelled to act upon any of them to catch up.

Success is a hard one to define. I used to place myself as the one who got out there and became the most successful, but I've realigned my definition of success to one simple question: "Did you manage to leave our dying, shit-for-brains town?"

I went to my ten year reunion thinking I'd show up and turn the tables on everyone that laughed and made fun of me and pushed me around in school. Whaddyaknow-they were as indifferent then as they were in school. Never, ever going back to another reunion. Fuck. Them.

 

Most of my high school friends are still friends. Most of them (one in banking, two others teachers) still live in the Kansas City area. Another high school and college friend works for Intel in Portland, Ore. A whole lot more friends who didn't go to college are doing well, also in greater KC. Most all of them are married with children.

The closest of those friends, I've kept in touch with them through the years.

 

My best friends are still, for the part, high school friends, though about half of them I didn't get close to until after graduation. I'm the only one that has had a real job for very long. One, who was my freshman year roommate in college, just got his bachelor's after a solid 7 years of trying. Another just finished up his law degree after getting a masters in psychology right after his undergrad. Smart guy, top third in his law class at a good school, but he can't find a job. Another guy spent a ton of time in school, but is now a nurse anesthetist.

The nurse anesthetist is about to marry his high school girlfriend and I'm planning the bachelor party. The whole gang of us used to always take trips together. We rented a houseboat at a lake 5 years in a row, went on Spring Break together a few times. Always awesome. But it was always like pulling teeth getting people to come up with the money. Now we're all 27, 28 or 29, getting ready for a trip to Vegas. Shockingly, getting people to pay up is still nearly impossible. All three of those guys are or will be making a lot more money than me soon, but damn, hard to believe we're almost 30 and most of them are just now getting real jobs.

A fourth friend, kind of the co-best man for that wedding, backed out of the bachelor party entirely. He flipped out in college after the girl he was about to propose to broke up with him and hasn't ever been the same. Married some weird troll-looking chick real fast, moved 1,500 miles from home. After that, he'd always brag about making $200k a year selling insurance. Now he's bankrupt and going back to school. He's 29 now and won't be finished with the degree he wants until he's about 35. I hope he has his loans paid back before he retires.

Of course, compared to all the people here that have friends on death row and in super max prisons, I guess my friends have their shit in order.

 

Of 300 only 25 even tried college? That seems amazing to me. Of my class of 80 in a rural suburb, probably at least 70 at least pretended they were going to go to a college. I only remember two or three that were flat out like "fuck it." One was a really hot girl who quickly married a guy a little older than us. The others were hard core druggies.

Of that 70, I bet at least 45 spent a significant amount of time in college and 35 graduated.

 

Bringing this back from the dead.

It just dawned on me that it's ten years this month since I left high school. Time files when you're stumbling through life. Looking back the summer of 2000 seems like a long time ago as well. I don't know if it feel like ten years, but it does feel like a long time ago. Realising that a whole decade has passed made me feel slightly nostalgic. Alas, I don't see anyone who I went to school with any more. So, I've got no one to reminisce with.

I haven't really done much in those ten years. To tell the truth, often times I still don't feel like a grown up. I am though. Time moves on with or without you.