old chums

a few months ago, i got a friendster invite from an old high school chum. up until that time my only link to my pre-teen years had been my old grade school friend ronald. when this other classmate added me, i thought it was also a random find.

but yesterday i got an invite from yet another high school friend and it occurred to me to go through my friends' lists and see if any other old face from my grade school or high school would show up.

to my surprise, not only were some of my other classmates there, apparently we even have a batch friendster. i'm starting to appreciate this site again. just when i had whittled down my list from around 250+ down to a more intimate and trustworthy 120 or so, i find old friends lurking not too far in the intricate networks of friendster.

going through some of the profiles, i was amazed by just how much my old classmates had grown. some looked better than before. some grew old. a lot of them grew fat. quite a number are married. only a few are still single. a few aren't even in the philippines. and there's even a batch trannie. and there's also this very, very early friend, someone i badmouthed back in 6th grade (yes, even back then i was already evil).

wow. put ten years between you and someone you thought you knew and you'll find just how wrong you were.

i admire people who stay friends with people from their high school and their grade school. because i didn't. i kept moving on to the next big thing that life had to offer, and so lost so many people in the process, for better or worse.

i just get to thinking about how it was that after i left for UP, i seem to have lost touch with all my childhood chums. it didn't help that with the move to the university we also moved cities. and while manila and quezon city are just beside each other, it feels like the two are a universe apart for me since i rarely ever go back there.

and i'm just wondering whether i should add up these people, after all these years and a couple of reunions i've missed. how, for instance am i to deliver the process of coming out to them? i can't trust my friendster profile to do the job. i want it face to face. these people aren't exactly my closest friends but they saw me evolve (at least a bit) from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. they were a part of my life, and while i may not care about some, i still want to find out about the others.

i guess i'll take it one old friend at a time.