For the past few months, I’ve been spending more and more time with an old friend of mine from high school. We’d been close back then, he being a prominent part of our nerdy, wonderful little group. College pulled us apart, though, and save for one or two dinners in the interim years, we really hadn’t seen each other since graduation.

It was Friday evening after a particularly boring week, when I was surprised to see the familiar name on my cell caller ID.

“So it seems that your blog has requested my friendship on MySpace,” he told me with a bit of a laugh in his voice.

“I didn’t even know that inanimate objects could create profiles!”

I cracked up and after chatting for a while, we made those tentative usually never actually happen “let’s grab drinks soon” kind of plans and hung up. Minutes later, the phone rang and it was him again.

“Actually,” he asked. “What are you doing now?”

Somehow, he convinced me out of my pajamas and into the shower, and two hours later we were sitting in a coffee shop downtown, enthusiastically catching each other up on the last several years of our lives. We spent a lot of time marveling over the way the hobbies and extra-curricular activities we had each been obsessed with at age 16 had now, nearly ten years later, become our careers. It was hours before I got home, coffee having turned into a movie followed by drinks and then a couple hours of just wandering around West Village side streets. Morning light was just starting to creep into the sky when I finally crawled into my bed, feeling happy at having found my old friend and still relishing in that familiar comfort of being around someone who knew you when your hair was always frizzy and your stupid knee socks would never stay up.

We found ourselves telling bits of that story again this past weekend as we dined and drank and dined and drank again with some of his friends and coworkers—a vibrant circle of clever, intelligent people that I’ve been openly coveting as my own for the past couple months. I was chatting with a girl sitting across from me when I heard him mention going to a concert I would have loved.

“Wait…wait…and you went without me?!” I exclaimed, a bit offended at the thought.

“No, no,” he said quickly. “This was a couple years ago. It was after/before!”

“After/before?” I asked, the sangria/blueberry stoli/wine combination I’d been imbibing all night lending obvious fuel to my confusion.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “after we met but before we met again.” My smile broke through then as I understood. “Ohhh…” I said with a boozy whisper. “I call those dark ages…”

Labels: friends, memories, New York

"after/before" is perfect! how hysterical! glad you reconnected.

I lost touch with my blast from the past guy again!