Friendships are meant to last a lifetime. This life is too short to just make short-term friendships. Friendships should not end due to distance or spending quality time on a daily basis.
Everyone knew everyone when growing up in a small elementary school. From kindergarten all the way through sixth grade, I made many friends. With a classroom of about 15-20 students, we all had to become friends. Sure, there was a military brat here and a friend who had to move because their mom or dad got a new job in some big city there, but we pretty much stayed together for six years.
After "graduation," we got to have a choice of three middle schools to attend. This is the beginning of the struggle of not seeing each other. One of your best friends may go to school A while the other goes to school B. You want to stay with both of them, but that isn’t quite possible. You ask yourself which is the school you want to go to. Other kids’ parents (like mine) didn’t give their child that option and they were just shuffled off to whichever school their parents felt was the best option. So once you got to middle school, you got a whole new set of faces to see. You are very glad to see some of your old classmates from elementary school again, because you don’t want to that one kid who doesn’t have any friends on the first day of school. As middle school progresses, you start making new friendships, whether on the field, in the orchestra room, in the classrooms, or at practice. Life’s going well. You’re not as scared of middle school. You’ve made many new bonds with friends. The next thing that you know, high school is right around the corner! We’ve all done this rodeo before and, sadly, you know that some of the friends you made in middle school might not be in the same high school.
High school is the time to rise and show the world how much of a man (or woman) you’ve become! You’re searching around for faces once you step into school. You were looking in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and some kids were even popping their heads into the bathrooms to look for their old friends. The next thing that you know, you see your friends from middle school and y’all catch up on your summer adventures. As your first day goes by and you’re going from one class to another, you think that you saw someone from elementary school walk into the class that you’re about to go into. You want to ask them if they are who you think that they are, but who wants to embarrass themselves on the first day of high school? As the teacher is calling roll, you’re still wanting to ask that familiar face if they were from the same elementary. The teacher calls out a name that you remember from elementary and you jolt your head up to see if it's that person. You see their hand rise up, hear them say, “here,” and you feel like it's been a lifetime since you seen them. Y'all catch up after class and all of life’s worries go away.
High school flies by fast. You’ll know when senior year has come when FAFSA slaps you in the face and teachers are yanking your leash, telling you to do your college applications. After submitting them, you be thinking about which colleges will accept you and what schools all of your other friends will be going to. On top of that, some kids have already made up their decision on what major they want to do in college (I was one of them). Prom comes and parties start popping up here and there. Graduation comes out of nowhere and you’re being handed a diploma while shaking some person’s hand who you've never seen before in front of your family and friends. So many memories have been made, not just in the four years of high school, but for the past 12 years of your education.
The next milestone in life is after graduation. Some friends go on to serve our country. Others go straight into the work force. The majority of kids go to college. It’s a weird feeling. You’re technically an adult, yet you’re still going to school? We can skip class with our friends and hang out, right? Students tend to forget that the main thing about college is that most professors really don’t care if you go to class or not. You’ve already given them your money for tuition. In addition to tuition, you can’t forget the textbooks that aren’t free anymore. Yet, as you’re going through your college classes, you’ll meet old classmates who graduated with you and those who graduated ahead of you. There will be new friendships that you will make with your classmates, some being the same age as you and others probably 20 years older than you. Some friends will consider going Greek (which I highly suggest) and other friends will be in other organizations. No matter what you do in college, you’ll either catch up with old friends and continue where you all left off or have the opportunity to make new friends and call them family some day.
Friendships are for a lifetime and they start when we are young. You never know, someday you may run into an old friend and you can get some dinner and catch up. You may have forgotten your wallet at home and your best friend who you work with might spot you some cash. There will be people who will call you and your buddy friends. Yet, you know that you aren’t friends. You have been through thick and thin together, the ups and downs. It is these kinds of people who you know that you should not call “friends.” They are called family. Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.
