Friends from our Childhoods

Actually this very topic has been on my mind a lot....but it's much larger than just childhood friends...more to do with how my little town has changed so much in the past few years....but my thoughts have been heavily peppered with several of the friends I've made....and the reasons why I've distanced myself from them....from childhood and otherwise.

Yes, I did decide to run for mayor....of course there is the matter of an election, someone could run against me and win....but at the moment, there are no other serious candidates.

I hope that all that I have done, and wish to achieve in the future has been done for the right reasons, I'm not in it for fame or glory....and trust me, the pay is minimal. There are things that need to be done, and are within our power to do so, but have been put off for way too long.....it is in my nature to solve problems....to fix things, so it all makes for a nice fit. If it were possible, I would do everything anonymously...that was one of the reasons I enjoyed being a coucilman...unless somebody came to a meeting, they never really knew what project I was working on, but as mayor I will be out in front for the whole town, as well as the county, to see.

I do have one underlying reason that has motivated me to a certain extent thus far, but only my wife and sister know of that reason, as it is a very personal thing....but it's slight, nowhere near the true driving force of my actions of simply wanting to improve the quality of life for the folks in my little town.

During my little mulling period, one of the main things that kept coming up was the fact of losing my identity....as an example, I frequent yard sales, I am a junk-junkie....we have laws on the books that limit the amount of yard sales that can be held at a specific address per year....I'll admit that might sound a bit "commie like" but we had several families that had "yard sales" year round....left the stuff outside on sawhorses covered with tarps...and those were often covered in leaves, snow....christmas lights, I should have taken a picture of that...etc. So now when I see a sale, and stop, I often cause a bit of tension, as I am in their eyes no longer Stephen the yard sale hound, but the code enforcer that's gonna fine them for having too many yard sales...or not having that car tagged yet, or whatever infraction they might have going on. "No mam' I'm jus here ta sift thu yo junk".

This all may seem way of the main topic, but to me it's all tied together, as all of this affects how I interact with others, friends old and new, and the distance.....some of which is my own doing, that grows everytime I move up the municipal ladder. I will cover the childhood friends aspect of this in detail, so maybe you guys can see what I'm really getting at.

I wonder whether it is hardwired into us to become nostalgic in old age,
yearning for the friends of childhood.

Dave,

I think I'm void of that gene, but old age is still a ways off for me yet.

I am a righty...full bore....but I'm about a century off the mark....in my eyes Teddy Roosevelt outranks all others, with Barry Goldwater coming in at a somewhat distant second....as I'm sure you know, Teddy was a big proponent of phonetic spelling....enough = enuf....makes perfect sense to me...but the vast majority of our population scoffs at the idea. With text messaging being all the rage that it is, I could see the next generation or so being more apt to a change in that direction, since the type of shorthand they use is for the most part phonetic. The list of 300 words that the simplified spelling board came up with over 100 yrs ago, would still be a good starting point.

WELL, I have to go and make the trip North for this funeral and a remembreance party on Saturday. Im getting more and more creeped out by how Joels life seemed to be missing something that hed s[end so much time reliving his past and preparing for its reiteration during a burial ceremony and a followup "Life celebration"

. . . But I'm still in touch with all the ones who are still alive - so
maybe we can make it happen next New Year's Eve - now that all
our kids are big and we won't have to drag them along and bore
them to death with all our old stories.

Been trying to figure out how to keep this to a minimum,
on subjects such as this....it's way too easy for me to go into a 10k word tirade.

My litte town and the entire area in which I live is very polarized, we're all poor folk, but some that are just a bit better off spend their entire lives masking just how poor they really are by many ways and means, but the one that is married to this topic....the biggie....they take on a persona of just being "better" than others, and of course the only real way to complete this, is to take every chance they can to humiliate or ridicule those they find to be their lesser.

There are several ways to deal with this if you are on the receiving end, ignore it...try to be accepted/join in....stand your ground/fight them {which was and still is my option} or simply run away, which is to say move away at the first possible chance....this is what my two friends did {and many, many others}. Of course this is from my pov, but what they have done by leaving, is they gave up, and not just in the tucked their tails and ran sort of way....but they also gave up their roots, their ties to the community, and all the positives you gain from growing up in a small town.....they have to start over in a new town, and more to the point their children have to start over.

My oldest friend has no desire to be anybody but who he is, he never had that "I wish I could hang with those kids" thing going....and I respect that personality trait in someone more than any other. But he was often very angry "at the world" and by the time we were teenagers and I guess the hormones kicked in....he became the most pessimistic person I've still yet to meet.

It became a chore just to be around him, and our friendship waned, once he had moved away, his personality softened a great deal, but every year his attitude of "I got out of that hell hole, why don't you" grows stronger and becomes more arrogant...this is the friend that laughs at any idea of me having any kind of authority...yep he LOL's in my face.

My other friend...we became friends in Jr high, and spent a lot of time together in high school, nearly inseparable....now, he is the type to covet others...he always wanted to be one of "them", but he kept this hid from me pretty well....he was a closet social climber....we were well out of high school before I ever knew he had those feelings, and he has them bad. A few nights before our 10yr HS reunion, we spent nearly two hours on the phone, mainly him opening up to me about how bad all of our experiences had and still bothered him. He is a very...very macho guy, so for him to do that was a major thing, so I told him out of respect for our friendship, I would not go...and even offered to round up the old gang and go in and just beat the livin hell out of the sob's...break tables and all that jazz....he was so upset that he didn't even want to do that.

I'm sure he had been dwelling on all of it, in the months leading up to the reunion...and it finally boiled over.

This friend is actually not from my town, but from another even smaller town in my county

...but it's one in the same....in his instance, he also hated his town, but moved to the town where we went to school, were most of the kids that looked down on us lived....in essence since he couldn't beat them, he joined them. During our phone convo, I tried to tell him that all that HS crap did not matter....he has a great job, a very nice house...pretty wife..etc...but none of it phased him. That was 10 yrs ago, and since then he seems to have finally accepted it all, and got passed it...well, all of it except for me. Any notion of my accomplishments, or even my childrens, is totally ignored...the last time something really nice happend....some of you may remember from last year that my oldest daughter was elected home coming queen.......when I told him I got a blank stare and then he just turned and walked away. This is the friend that goes into shock anytime something positive happens in my life...he becomes a confused mute person, and stumbles away.