Have you ever been surprised by running into or getting a blind call from an old friend? Do you remember how excited and happy you were getting caught up? Friends give our life meaning, context, and warmth. They help define the stages of our lives, and they can be an oasis of stability and refuge in both trying and exceptional times.
We are social creatures. Whether introverted or extroverted, we need the occasional or long-term friends and friendships to share and navigate our lives. Whether quantity or quality, our friends activate, energize, and memorialize our lives. They are worth having, remembering, and treasuring at all life's stages.
To help you recall and value your friendships, I'm reflecting on and sharing some of my friendships and experiences at different life stages in this four-part series of stories. Friendships are meaningful in many ways, and I hope it triggers your memories and experiences that will renew and enrich your lives now and whenever you need that warmth and comfort. Community life builds on the countless number of relationships people have with each other, many of which are friendships. Our friendships humanize us and help establish a thriving social environment we call our community.
Over the next four weeks, each chapter will chronicle friendship through four stages of my life. I'm calling them:
In the 'Hood – Childhood Years
Where Are the Girls – Teen Years
The Pro Years – Working Adult Years
On the back of an Elephant – Retirement Years
In the Hood – Childhood Years
We all know our early years of socializing and learning in our families and through our play experiences with friends shape us and how we encounter life. I was lucky to have a loving and supporting family and a stable neighborhood of friends to help guide me. Not all family and friend experiences and encounters are positive. But we learn from both the positive and negative.
I live in Tampa, Florida. I'm 75 years old, and my life has been unique and ordinary as most others, and it's had its ups and downs.
I live on a broad boulevard that winds and parallels a bay shoreline, and I live in a second-floor small condo facing the water. I can see many markers of my life from my balcony. I was born in the hospital across the bay, and I spent much of my career downtown, a mile distant. And I've walked, biked, run, and driven during different years of my life on the roads, sidewalks, pathways, and parks just outside.
There may be no place like home, but I like to travel too. I've visited and toured on every continent except Antarctica. I've driven across the US twice and flown across it and up and down it more than I can remember. I've visited most states, most big cities, and many small ones. I've cruised across the Atlantic once and the Pacific twice. And I did it all with friends and some family. And that's the point. You can be a hometown native, a world traveler, or whatever labels you call yourself. Wherever you live, wherever you go, chances are friends, and our friendships are integral to life's journey. Some you take with you. Some you meet along the way.
I live about a mile or two from where I grew up and went to school from elementary to high school. I went to a Catholic K-8 elementary school, ninth grade at a Catholic high school, and 10-12 grades in a public high school.
In the neighborhood I grew up in, across the street, next door, or within a couple of houses from where I lived, there were at least twelve boys my age or a year or two of me. All but three went to my Catholic school. The school was about six blocks away, without any busy streets along my route. I biked back and forth to school once I learned to ride a bike. The neighborhood moms rotated carpooling on cold or rainy days.
The parents of the other boys in the neighborhood and mine socialized together. And they even coordinated what gifts we got for Christmas, so we all would be included in the games, toys, and play equipment the others had.
We all were in cub scouts and boy scouts together, and all of us who were Catholic were also altar boys. We hung out together for Halloween and couldn't wait to show off what we got for Christmas.
Many acres of woods ran to a bay within only a block of where we all lived. You had to wade across a shallow drainage ditch to get to it, and we called that "the creek." People built our neighborhood just before and after WW II, and most homes had big yards with big trees. With the help of the dads, we all had wooden forts, tree houses, and bag swings you could ride from platforms built in the trees, and a lot of the big trees were very climbable.
Most of us young boys had more than enough to play. We had BB guns, fishing gear, tents, frog gigs, machetes, jungle hammocks, sandboxes, swings, see-saws, climbing bars we called "monkey bars," bikes, and kick-balls. We didn't have TV or high-tech amenities. In the summertime and on weekends, we would show up at each other's bedroom windows, climb out, and head out on "adventures" until sundown. Sometimes we made pb&j (peanut butter and jelly for the uninitiated) sandwiches and took them with us. I don't remember any of us getting into any serious trouble.
We went fishing, camping, bike-riding, "hunting" across the "creek," and crabbing together. We killed, skinned, and mounted the skins of poisonous snakes on planks. I learned how to throw a cast net or use a seining net along a shoreline to catch bait for fishing. We had acquired a rare rowboat on one fishing adventure, and three of us went into the bay fishing. Fortunately, most fish are found close to shore in grassy bay bottoms because a sudden thunderstorm popped up. We were lucky we were not out in open water. We escaped to a nearby sandbar, flipped the boat over us, and rode out the lightning and rain. When it stopped, one of us knew a quick way to land where he could run to the marina and a phone to let everyone know we were safe. By the time he got back and we got the boat back to the marina, our parents and marina workers were waiting to greet us. You would think we were lost at sea. Mostly I was embarrassed, but I thought we had comported ourselves well under the circumstances. I never found out exactly what my other friend told his parents and the marina, but they seemed to be relieved. Good to be worried about and missed.
As teens, we built and graduated to homemade, lawnmower-powered go-carts. Some got motorbikes, but those were rare. Later we had cars or access to them, but not until after high school. There was little need for cars unless it was a special occasion, like going out on a date.
Today, six of my childhood friends still live locally. One is in New York City, one is in Georgia, two are in North Carolina, another is in Jacksonville, and the last is deceased. We all went to one of two high schools. Three of us went to the University of Florida together, and two of us became fraternity brothers together.
Only last month and out of the blue, one friend found me on Facebook, and we spent several days exchanging messages and catching up. It brought back a rush of memories, and we happily reminisced. We continue to communicate.
I have crossed paths since childhood with all but three of them, at reunions, funerals, church functions, social events, or just luck. They are all fine men, and I highly value the friendships I had with them, the many skills I learned, and the thousands of fun experiences we had together.
As I look back across the years of my life, I realize how fortunate I was for the friendships I formed during my childhood.
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Next week, in the episode "Where Are the Girls – Teen Years," I will continue my saga and transition into the teen and young adult years. In the meantime, can you remember your earliest friends and first "adventures"? What lifelong skills and experiences did you learn with your childhood friends? Any that you can share? Do you retain any contact with those friends?
This week's blog story is part of a month-long story. To view past installments and other stories, please visit our blog, Learn-Engage-Empower Learn-Engage-Empower, at im4u.world and subscribe to get the stories delivered directly.
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