Who are your best friends?

Two high school friends and several college friends. I see them all a few times a year, and plan to continue to do so in perpetuity. One of my high school friends has a son a year younger than my own, and it's really fun to see those two becoming friends now, too.

I could honestly no sooner pick between the two groups than I could choose between my two children.

I also have one friend from the newspaper/magazine/Web site business that I'm still pretty close to. We're in the same city, and we have kids the same age.

It seems to me that having children the same age, or children at all, is a big key to remaining close to old friends, because you remain at something resembling the same life stage.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybugI5CkIs

 

Totally agree on the last part. Over the past year I've drifted pretty far from one of my good friends in part because he moved away, but mostly because his life still consists largely of gambling and getting blackout drunk, while I settled down and got married and spend most of my free time with my wife and son.

I acknowledge he's not a bad guy, he just has very different priorities than me and the rest of our group of buddies. When he does occasionally hang out with us, he zones out and checks his phone whenever the conversation turns toward kids, which it inevitably does because three of the four of us have 2-year-olds.

I'm glad, though, that I have a group of four friends who all have a kid between 1 and 2 years of age, and two of us have another on the way (due the same week in May) while the other two are trying for their second. We're all sharing similar experiences and getting the kids together keeps us close.

 

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Me, myself and I.

 

My 10 best friends are a mix. Four are high school friends, three are college friends, three are writers who I worked with or alongside.

 

My wife sometimes points out that I don't really have friends. I then ask her when am I supposed to have time to make them when I work at night and on weekends, which is when most of the world gets to hang out with their friends, and sleep during the day? Free time is spent with family and doing chores around the house.

 

This is a major part of the reason I left sportswriting and moved to design. Regular hours allowed me have a life outside the office. I loved sportswriting. I don't miss it for a second. I did miss my family and friends.

 

Same here.

 

There are a couple good friends from high school (one from grade school) I stay in regular contact with, and visit when I'm back in town (or when they come out my way).

Can't think of anyone I keep up with from college — other than my wife, of course.

And the thing about the journalism biz — at least when I started in the first half of the 1990s — is you change jobs a lot, so even though you do fun stuff together both after work and outside of work, usually you don't stay in touch once you lose the main thing (job) you had in common.

I'll agree about the kids, too ... once you have them, you begin to meet and hang out with other parents who have kids the same age. Especially once they get in school and start doing sports or other after-school activities.

 

I can understand not having time for friends, between work and family. That doesn't explain a couple friendless decades earlier in the life, but whatever.