Ever reconnected with an old friend only to find out you dont like them anymore?

[fastfredracing]

I lost touch with a bunch of old buddies over that last 15 years. All of a sudden , they are crawling out of the woodwork, and resurfacing again. Not through facebook or anything like that either, just random.
I ran with older guys when I was a teen, and there were two brothers who were pretty much like family. I really looked up to these guys, and they took good care of me. I had a lot of firsts with them( imagine women, , beer, motorcycles, cars,parties etc..)and I have always felt that they helped shape my early life.
So the older brother shows up at my shop recently and has not changed a bit. Still a super good guy, and I am real happy to have him back in my life. Shortly after, his younger brother also makes an appearance , but he is now a raging loud mouth drunk. He was a wild man in his youth, and I always thought he was fun to hang around, but my god man, we are over 40 now, I can't even bear to have a 5 minute conversation with him.
He keeps calling to invite me up to his house, and out for drinks, but I don't think I can stomach it.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Why do you think I have little/no use for things like Facebook, Myspace, etc.?

If someone doesn't have my current phone number or e-mail address, there's probably a reason.

People should learn to look forward - never backwards.

[azasadny]

Yep, it's part of life. The rare "old friend who becomes a new friend again" is pretty cool, though!

[herr_oberst]

I'm pretty sure I know your loudmouth drunk friend, at least a carbon copy. Hard to be around.

Me and the best buddy I ever had growing up tried to reconnect - didn't really happen. We still have a lot in common, but our lives are just radically different now; On the other hand, I hooked up with a bunch of my classmates at a reunion, now we get together all the time and are better friends than we ever were in school.

[azasadny]

If you only really "connect" with one out of ten people you used to hang out with, you're fortunate! I just spent some time last night with a buddy from HS and we were best friends until 1994 or so. I got married and had kids, he didn't and get became a millionaire, so we didn't have too much in common anymore. Now he's got 2 kids, going through a divorce, losing his home and business and his parents are dying. I'm helping him out as much as I can to help him through this trauma... We packed up his boat last night as he had to sell it (divorce) and he was having a difficult evening...

[Gogar]

People should learn to look forward - never backwards.

You can have reverence for the past and look forward at the same time. Meeting old friends who "haven't changed a bit" can also be a good reminder of how far you have - or haven't - come.

[GWN7]

Hooked up with two old buddy's just recently. One I haven't seen since high school. He moved to London and hooked up with a super group. Not as a member but worked and traveled with them for over 20 years (has credits on several of their LP's). It's been interesting talking to him. We both have a lot still in common. P cars, guns, ect.

The second I haven't seen in 14 years. Went to see a buddy's band play this week and he was sitting in. Woke up the next day with a huge head. I think it was the jagmiester that did it. Will see how this one plays out, I can't drink like I used to.

[Zeke]

Each and every time. Most of the time it's their wife or choice of friends.

It will never be the same as when you and the friend were on the loose together.

[stomachmonkey]

Yeah, my good bud Joe. I moved to a different town and we lost touch.

Saw him again at a HS reunion. "Dude, you gotta come hang, meet the fam, here's my number, call me, yada yada...."

My good bud Kevin comes over, "You need to stay away from Joe. Do you know where he's been the last 10 years?"

Uhh, No.

"He's been in Federal Prison under protection. He was running guns and sticking up drug dealers with some gang in Chinatown. Feds were watching him which made his gang friends nervous so they stabbed him 6 or 7 times but he lived. So he dropped dime on his buddies and after the Feds got done with him they turned him loose. It's not a good idea to be seen with him."

[KarlCarrera]

Yep,

Remembered why they were old friends.

Karl
88 Targa

[slakjaw]

Yes, thanks to faceplant. I moved to Minnesota 5 years ago and I must have changed. It's kind of sad, I used to play in a band with these guys and we were tight back then.

[Icemaster]

Originally Posted by milt

Each and every time. Most of the time it's their wife or choice of friends.

It will never be the same as when you and the friend were on the loose together.

Exactly. Seems it's always some other influence that causes the friction.

[vash]

i ditched facepalm. every person tried to show me their farmville. old friends, whatever.

i once got re-acquainted with an ex. hot..ballet dancer. i was surprised to find the magic gone. even as friends. we had very little to talk about. she was still very hot, but seem less intelligent. even she found me on facebook. she now has a bunch of kids. she still looks pretty hot.

[legion]

In middle school and early high school, there were three of us that did everything together: Me, Bob, and Griffin.

Griffin got thrown out by his raging alcoholic/coke-head mom sophomore year (1994) of high school (through no fault of his own) and moved in with his dad in North Carolina. Didn't see/hear from him until...

Fast forward to 2002. Griffin comes back and moves in with his mom again. A little weird, because at 22 he should have been somewhat independent. Bob, Griffin, and I went out drinking one night and had a good time. A few weeks later, I'm up in Naperville at my parent's house and he calls me up to come over and hang out.

I go over and he's playing some new video game he just bought. Now, when we were in middle school/high school, he was always the kid who got the new video game the day it came out. We'd watch him play it for hours while we would patiently wait for a turn to play it ourselves, which might never come...

So after half an hour of watching Griffin play this video game, I left. He wanted me to watch him jealously as he played with something I didn't have. Fact was, I could have gone out and bought the game system and the game right then and there if I wanted to, so I wasn't jealous anymore. I was kind of sad, actually. Griffin was exactly the same guy he was in middle school, but now he was an adult, and there was little chance he was going to change. That was the last time I saw Griffin.

I've since heard that his mom died, left him a pile of cash, and with it he bought a house. He works the midnight shift at a bakery and uses his meager earnings to buy pot and video games.

Bob matured just a little more than Griffin before he stopped maturing. Whereas Griffin was stuck as a harmless early teen, Bob was stuck as a hell-raising late teen. Several arrests, multiple DUIs, a few busts for possession. He's never held down a job for longer than six months. He took several years to get his GED and never finished community college. (Though he did stop paying for his students loans and gave the collection agency my address.) He has outstanding warrants in Texas.

Fact is, I can't connect with Bob or Griffin anymore. They would always scrape by with no real ambition. I am ten years into my professional career. Just hanging around them (especially Bob) when they get busted again for possession would be enough to kill my professional life.

It was good. But it's good that is was...

[Jim Bremner]

Yup, best friend grew up to like MACs and Glocks

[dependencies]

Ah the perils of facebook/friends reunited/reunion.com eh!

[Laneco]

Ran into a friend of my mother's on facebook, her daughter and I went to school together. I haven't seen or heard from the mom since I was about 17. She sent me a friend request on Facebook and when I realized who she was, I accepted. We've chatted several times. It is the social equivalent of pulling large splinters from infected flesh... I absolutely can't stand her. Incredibly negative and sour.

Conversely, I've grown rather close to people who were not close friends at all many years go. It seems that time makes some people genuinely better human beings, or maybe the shell of silliness wears off to reveal the good beneath.

I guess the point of this wandering post is that most of us change. The people we may have been friends with 20 or 30 years ago may or may not fit our current life. Those were only nodding acquaitenances before may now offer a warm, wonderful friendship.

angela

[Evans, Marv]

I'm not inclined to get reacquainted with old friends from high school era days. Many of them are still in the same town associating with the same people and probably doing similar things to what they did years ago, just on different level. My life has been much different than most of theirs. I did have an old friend contact me 35 years ago. We used to have fun drinking and partying. My wife at the time & I went to visit him & his family in New Orleans, and he had told me he had a million dollar + business. Turned out he had a small business servicing coffee machines at businesses. Called me up on day asking to borrow $1,500 to get his daughter out of jail & only paid me back $700 (but I fully expected something like that). Got into an argument with his wife one night, went into the back yard, put a .38 in his mouth & pulled the trigger. That sort of let me know I've had enough of old friends & their current lives.

[tcar]

Part of 'maturity' is brain delvelopment.

In boys, particularly, the part of the brain that determines the ability to automatically think things through before acting, doesn't happen until mid twenties. Generally.

That's why your Dad was saying "What the h... were you thinking?" The answer is... "I wasn't".

So what's cool/exciting when you're 16 can seem insane at 30.

Some never develop, though..