College friends are like war buddies. You know how they say soldiers and policeman form intense bonds with their comrades-in-arms? It’s supposed to be a reaction to relying on other people for the safety of your life in extreme situations and such. Well, your closest friends in college become like that, albeit to a much lesser degree. I can’t speak for everyone, but my college years were all about upheaval and insanity. True, whirlybird insanity. Muy loco. Everyone around me was apparently going through the same thing at exactly the same time, and frankly, I think it’s a wonder any of us made it out alive. I personally can’t remember more than a few truly sane moments in all the years I was going to school. I also can’t remember entire months of my freshman year, but that’s another story. The point is, when you hit that weird age where new independence meets new responsibility and you have no clear idea who you are or what you want to be, it gets difficult to maintain your sea legs. You kind of grope around blindly trying to ‘find yourself’ and work toward a ‘future’, which is frighteningly vague (for most of us, I think) and fairly intangible. All while trying to make the most of the BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE. Sheeesh. Reality check, anyone? You say things that you’d never intended, do things that will haunt you the rest of your life, and spend the last couple of years trying desperately to erase the damage caused by your first two years. Or maybe that was just me.
But no, that covers about 75% of the people I went to school with, so I think I’m pretty safe in the assumption. At any rate, if you’re lucky, you had at least a few good friends who did their dead-level best to help you out despite the fact that they had issues all their own. They covered for your ass, talked you out of the REALLY bad ideas, and if they were right there with you when you crashed, whatever form that took. These people went through it with you, right through the hurricane’s eye, and there’s no hiding from them. They know where all the bodies are buried, for certain.
After graduation, things mellow, but get weirder in a way. People get on with their lives, and the humdrum of daily living takes the desperate edge out of your friendships. You may want to keep those friendships, but you no longer need them so much. And so, as is the way of things, you start to lose touch with a few, then a few more, till finally you’ve parceled out the handful that work best with your new life. Sometimes that corresponds with the people who know your dirtiest secrets, and sometimes it‘s less uncomfortable to avoid those people. Out of a group of about 20 of us who used to hang, 10 of whom were very close, some of us are still friends, some of us are even closer friends, and some of us just avoid each other altogether. The funny thing is that I would still do anything for any one of them even now. Guess that’s part of the war buddy thing. They may have pissed me off and I might not have spoken to them in years, but if there was a need I’d be there, just like that.
The real reason that college pals are like war buddies is something else, though. Now, I’m not a soldier nor a policeman, so I’m going on pure speculation here, but I think a major component of this type of relationship is the fact that it’s so damn hard to explain to others. People who weren’t there may sympathize, may empathize, but they’ll never really get it, will they? I have quite a few friends that I made post-college and I consider some of them closer friends these days than I do those old college buds. But if we ever start to talk about things that happened during that time in our lives, a wall goes up. I can tell all the stories I remember, show all the photos I have, and I know they still just won’t QUITE get it. I’m sure they feel the same way. If you weren’t there, you’ll never really understand. The nice thing about it is that you’ll always be bound to those people in a very real way, and whether you still like each other or not, that link is long-lasting and damn near indestructible.
Salute to all my friends from those long-gone college days. It may not have been a war, but it felt like we were fighting something. Thanks for watching my back, guys.
