Friends and Family

ARE YOU STILL FRIENDS WITH ANY OF YOUR FRIENDS FROM HIGH SCHOOL? HOW HAVE THEY CHANGED SINCE THEN?

I’m getting behind. I’ll start and try to catch up…sometimes the questions take a lot of thought and most times I am just too busy. I try to write about my memories on Sundays. However, Sunday is also the day I try to make memories WITH my own family. TIME….the illusive commodity we all have!

At any rate, I will start with this one and move on…

First Facebook and now Instagram and Snapchat. Social Media is making it VERY EASY to remain in contact with old friends – even old friends you haven’t seen or heard from in a LONG time. Hence, I AM still friends with some of my high school friends. But … not really, in the OLD sense of the phrase.

Prior to social media, I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone from high school. I didn’t know their emails, nor their physical addresses. I left Utah County to attend college and right after college I served a mission. I went to BYU after but it had been SOOO long since high school, we really weren’t in touch. Then I married and moved to Tennessee. By this time, I had been out of school for 10 years and my path had gone far from Orem and Mountain View High School. When we moved back to Orem in 1999, I tried to get in touch with a couple friends, but not really. I believe I met up with Collette once after Spencer was born. Oh, wait…I would see –shoot! What is her name? She worked at Macey’s and I would see her EVERY time I came home. Not that we would EVER get together, but would have fun conversations at the deli.

I also remember when we first moved back, Ron Mortenson, who I served on the Student Council with my senior year, walked into a Stake Conference. He and I were the ones to put the letters up on the marque outside. It was fun to sit down and catch up a bit. Let’s see, anyone else? Oh, right before my mission I went out with Doug Hancock and even saw him after my mission. Oh yeah….I did get together with Amanda Langager…can’t remember her new last name. She married right out of high school, like RIGHT out of school. She divorced….I had seen her a couple times while they were married. But we did get together for ice cream one time when we lived there and she was married to her new husband. But not really anyone else – until just a few years ago. For some reason, Debbie Hadlock Stahmann got in touch with me. We had been friends in high school, but not really get together type friends. We found on social media that when she moved back to Utah, she was in my aunt’s ward. She visit taught my aunt and/or my cousin. Yeah, small world. So we got together one time when I was in town. We went to breakfast and just caught up a little.

Life is crazy when you think about it. During high school you have your best friends, girls (and guys) you think you will be with forever … that life as you know it won’t conceivably exist without them in your life. In fact, we were going to grow up, get married, have children, and live down the street from one another. But life isn’t like that … it is too big and too busy. While there are a lot of my high school friends that have remained in Utah, even Utah Country, and still get together periodically, I think life moves on and we go our separate ways. High school is defining enough that we can still see each other and have fond memories, but some of us are glad to progress past the pettiness of that era of life.

Funny memory – I went to a high school reunion. Let’s see … 20 years probably? It was hilarious to see the same ga-ga girls hanging all over the same drop dead boys. Yet life had moved on….and yet some do not. I am grateful to have matured past that stage, but also happy that social media now allows me to stay in contact should I desire. Some of those people had not changed AT ALL. Most of us have. Although we all have matured and aged a little, it was nice to be able to talk to them as people rather than competitors. The pretenses melt away and we can just be and converse. Probably my most shocking experience was sitting at dinner. One of the girls that had run against me for Student Council sat at my table. Actually, BOTH of them did that night. But the one had been especially snotty to me in high school. I wasn’t bitter this many years later. I don’t even think I was bitter then. But it did hurt a lot more then. Sadly, I let this view taint my interactions with her. Not until I was told about her brain cancer and difficulty as she fought to stay alive did I see her as she really was. She is just a human being, a frail human being like the rest of us, trying to stay afloat. Our issues cause us to react or act in certain ways – especially in high school. Gratefully, I was able to change my mind that night.

Over all….I still have them as friends, but rarely, IF EVER, do I make an effort to get together with them. Instead, I get together with college friends, or those I met in that stage of my life. And even with them, it is difficult. I have seen Diane Topham Garrett the most. But I have seen Heidi Schoemig Johnson too. I tried last summer to see Sherene Sorenson Carter, but couldn’t make it that far south.

Life marches on! And my family is the rock, the stable foundation in my life. When I go home, I see them. And now I also have a family of my own….and that is where my allegiance lie deeply rooted.