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I frequently gush about my long time love of the computer. There are countless benefits I have received from the computer but none so priceless as connecting with family and friends who are far away or rediscovering friends I thought I had lost track of forever. Over the last couple of years I have been in the happy state of almost weekly discoveries and transported back to my youth in a way I never thought possible.
I spent my teens in a small town known for long hot summers. My family moved to the small town from a large city. I was thirteen and learned life in a small town was very different from life in a large city. Add to that all the kids grew up together as a cohesive bunch of semi-siblings. It made me the “new” kid for my entire time there and made for interesting moments. It was very different for my city-born mother too but not for my dad. He thrived from day one having spent his youth in a small farming community in the south.
Though I experienced an unsettling period of adjustment early on, after enrolling in school I found I was enjoying life as a small town teen. The first few weeks were tough but the kids were a friendly bunch. I made a few cultural mistakes but I learned quickly. I wrote to my friends “back home” and they thought my new social activities and experiences were funny. I still had family in my previous hometown so we visited a few times in the first few months and I was able to visit my old friends but after a while the visits stretched to once a year then I don't remember going back until I was a young adult. Now I rarely visit my birth home though it isn’t that far away. I lost track of all my city childhood friends. I now think of the small town as my hometown though I only spent a little over six years there yet spent thirteen years in my birth city. That's how significant teen years are to a person's development.
There were cliques much like all schools but in a small town kids move freely between the cliques and for the most part everyone gets along. Of course there are always a few exceptions. While whiling away those years I often felt like I was in a teen movie: snappy cars, hamburger drive-ins, drive-in movies, outdoor skating rink, swimming in swimming holes or the rivers or lakes, cruising the drag, rock and roll, baseball in the park, stock car racing, dancing forever. It was our American Graffiti. (In fact, American Graffiti was filmed in the town I currently live in which is only an hour south of my small town home.)
When I left home I then lived in many places throughout my adult life. I married, raised a family, divorced, and kept on moving. Because my parents remained in the same town I always knew it was my home base, which was comforting no matter where I lived, or what I was experiencing. I loved visiting the folks during summers to enjoy the summer nights again. I could always go home to touch base with my comfort zone before heading back to my sometimes-complicated life.
Teen life in a small town, especially with hot days and warm summer nights, is special. Though there may not appear to be much to do in a small town, we always managed to have a fun time. We also got into our fair share of trouble. We were young and spirited and full of “ideas.” Not all of our ideas were good. I do not recall ever being bored. When my kids hit their teen years I was disappointed their social lives and that of their friends wasn’t as deep or rich as mine was. They too went to high school in a small town but it was a small town that was close to urban areas and the influence and availability of activities in the urban areas pulled them in that direction unlike the small town activities I enjoyed. Basically, I loved my teens and they did not love their teens. It was something they had to “get through.”
Though I experienced my right of passage and angst like all teens I still loved it. I remember getting ready to go to a dance with my friends and the minute I opened the front door and felt the warm summer night I was filled with great expectations. We were all decked out with poofy hair and snappy summer outfits, most of us sporting tans, and as was fashionable in that era, makeup fit for Cleopatra. To this day I long for those summer evenings but live in a town with frigid windy summer evenings. It’s the middle of July as I write this and I just watered my garden—in a parka. I might have to make a change.
Over the last few years some of my old teen friends have found each other. We have gone on a few “field” trips and met here and there and we have communicated by email. We are spread out all over the country. More recently social networking has opened up a whole new method for finding old friends. The referrals are flying. It’s amazing how we’ve connected and that we still enjoy each other’s company.
Because of a popular social networking site I’ve been on for about two years, last weekend I had yet another actual reunion with friends at my house. I admit that these reunions I’ve experienced over the past few years have turned me into an emotional and sentimental pile of mush. I adore seeing these friends and can’t wait to find more. This past weekend was so special I couldn’t stop smiling long after it ended. All day the following day as I walked around my house I kept thinking about how amazing it was we were all sitting in my living room chatting about everything as though we were getting ready for one of those warm summer night dances.
Sometimes these reunions I enjoy so much require that some of us travel great distances to reunite. It doesn’t matter. Most of us have retired or are about to retire and have lots of vacation time at our disposal to take these trips and visit. I’m not sure why it took so long to get to this point but I suspect a couple of reasons kept us apart.
First, we all went our separate ways and developed lives and lost touch. In urban areas many teens stay put because education and jobs are more easily found in that setting. Small town kids typically must move to attend college and find jobs. It didn’t mean we didn’t want to be in each other’s lives but it wasn’t practical and time marched on and we met new friends and developed other interests and lived adult lives. Also when we were developing our adult lives we didn’t have today’s technology and it wasn’t as easy to keep in touch. I suppose we could have phoned but if we weren’t keeping up with the daily life of a friend it was hard to sustain a phone conversation. No back-story to keep it going and one can only talk about the “good old days” for so long.
With email, text messaging, and social networking sites, we can catch up with a friend’s life in a relatively short period of time and from then on it’s simple to have a daily “hello” either with social networking or more privately with email. We can exchange photos and view a person’s entire life with a click.
Technology has reunited millions of family and friends around the world. We are so lucky to live in an age where we can extend our friendships for many years. I can’t wait to find more friends. I’m going to start looking for my pre-teen childhood friends next. [I know you are out there.]
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or entity that knows how to treat customers at least some of the time if not always.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
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[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
