Reuniting With Those Who Knew Us When

SAN DIEGO -- In the film "Stand by Me," the narrator -- voiced by Richard Dreyfuss -- offers an observation that sooner or later becomes undeniable as we advance in years: Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant.

Social network sites like Facebook have cheapened the concept of friendship. But they also provide a stickiness that helps us keep track of the wedding plans, parenting challenges, and vacation photos of that girl you've known since kindergarten who is now someone's wife, mother, grandmother. It may be that you haven't seen or talked to her since the Reagan years. Yet, when you find yourself face-to-face, perhaps against a backdrop of songs from the 1980s, time compresses. It's like you never parted. You pick up the friendship where you left it.

Yet it's also true that, throughout our lives, we're going to replace one group of friends with another, and then replace them again. There will be some holdovers, but many people will drift away. One day, we'll catch ourselves wondering: "Whatever happened to ... "

As we enter our 50s, we'll be able to look back and categorize all the people we know according to the stage of life in which we knew them. In our emotional filing cabinets, we'll have our friends from college, graduate school, the summer we spent in Europe, that dreadful first job, that doomed first marriage, the time we lived in Colorado.

And in a special category all its own, we'll have our friends from high school.

Wait. This is the part where my wife looks up from the newspaper and glares at me skeptically. She teases me, and tells me that I have no friends. And she's not entirely wrong. I have lots of acquaintances but not many friends.

I had a close friend growing up and another in college -- both of them named Joe. Tragically, both left this world much too soon. What's that line from Simon and Garfunkel? "If I never loved, I never would have cried."

These days, I don't really do the friend thing. But I did once. These are the people whose faces run through my mind as I get ready to return to Central California and attend the 30th reunion of the Sanger High School class of '85.

Time speeds by. It seems like only a month ago that we were at our 20th reunion, hugging each other, introducing spouses, and trying to drink from a fire hydrant by catching up on two decades of life experiences in 10 minutes of small talk. I remember the division between those of us who had left home, and those who had stayed. As the night ended, wanting to hold on to the moment, we promised to stay in touch. For the most part, we didn't. Life got in the way.

Now we're going to give it another try.

This is actually the second reunion I've been invited to this year. A few months ago, my college classmates gathered on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to reminisce and compare resumes. I didn't go. I love my school, and I care deeply about a handful of the folks who experienced it with me. But those relationships are different. In college, we were all so self-absorbed. It was difficult to let people get close to you, or for you to get close to them.

I have a beloved friend from college who likes to remind me that she knew me when I was "small change." I tell her that, even now, I'm at best "a buck fifty."

Think about your high school classmates. Before we knew anything, were anything, or accomplished anything, these people accepted us as we were. They wanted nothing from us, and we sought nothing from them. They were there before we got these scars, before life broke our hearts, before we misjudged people. They were there before we lost parents, bought homes, had children, got fired, changed careers, switched cities, started businesses, overcame health problems, lost our faith and found it again.

We've chosen to come together, after all these years, not to show off but to show each other what we once meant to one another. And still do.

And, through the wrinkles, extra pounds, thinning hair and gray whiskers, we know they'll recognize us, look into our eyes, cup the back of our neck, kiss our cheek. And welcome us home.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.