It has been two years since I moved in my with boyfriend, in his home in Mentor, Ohio. It is the most rural place I have lived, since moving to Ohio in 2016. That is vastly different than my childhood home. But there are times that it sparks some memory from my childhood and I am instantly transported back to my youth. Today, I thought I would reflect on childhood friendships, who they were, and how they were important to me.
We all think that the friends we have from our childhood will stand the test of time and
be there till the end. I know I had a few that I expected would be cutting up with me, even if I ended up in a nursing home. (Though, honestly, I never saw myself in a nursing home.) After all, you spend your formative years with them. You learn social interactions and cues, develop understandings of the world around you, and even learn how to work together. That leaves us believing that they will always be there for us, since they know us best.
Join me as I share Friendships That Last A Lifetime: Recollections of Childhood Companions.
- Finding friends close to home
- Schoolyard chums
- The Unexpected Bond Formed Over an Egg
- To college and beyond
- Friends for life or a time
Finding friends close to home
I have mentioned in previous articles that I grew up out in the sticks. In my early school days, riding the bus was an hour and a half trip to school. My sister and I would get on the bus around 6 or 6:30 am and get to school by 8:00am. We stayed with Grandma Lizzie and rode the bus with our cousins. Since we were so rural, my childhood friends were drastically limited before I started school. My sister and cousins were the closest I had.
When you are young, your first steps in making friends come from your family group. For me, it was my sister. Since you’re together for birthdays and holidays, it is only natural that a sibling is your first introduction to friends. Then comes your extended family, your cousins. This is your premade friend group, albeit, not as diverse as people you will soon meet. School is where you will develop your next social circle.
Outside of my sister, my very first friend was a cousin that we stayed with at our grandmothers. We were close until things between us changed. One incident and my whole world was wrecked. The person I knew and had fun with was ripped away. I got a talking to and then he barely talked to me afterwards. This was around the same time that I started kindergarten.
Schoolyard chums
Once you start school, many of your childhood friends start to fade. School allows you to meet people with similar interests. Your teachers group you with new people to help develop social skills. As you grow up, your friend group changes based on your interactions, likes/dislikes, and various other things. Those school friends you make are often the children of people your parents went to school with, especially if you grew up as rural as we did.
When I started kindergarten, I met Wesley. He was the son someone my mother went to school with, so he was considered safe. Wesley was a skinny kid with wild and fiery red hair, I instantly liked him. I remember the first time he asked me to spend the night. I was so excited. We rode the same bus so it was easy to pack extra clothes for a night stay and get off at his house. As our friendship grew we joined the Cub Scouts, together, and met our first friend group.
I remember that we stayed close friends until our first year in middle school. I was a restless kid, didn’t pay attention in class, and had some trouble adjusting to the new school. Subsequently, I failed my first year of middle school and was left behind, quite literally. The next year, Wesley would no longer acknowledge me. Seven years as friends and me failing a grade razed that friendship to the ground.
I had a few other friends in grade school…
There was my first girlfriend, B.J. We met in kindergarten and became super close and almost instantly we were inseparable. That was until some boy in my class got me to repeat a joke about her name. She started crying and turned me into the teacher. Our friendship stopped after that. It was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
There was also the duo of Lisa and Kim. We had one thing in common, a love for Michael Jackson. I read every book and magazine, about his life, I could get my mother to buy me. I even begged her to buy his music for me. All three of us would sit around in class and talk about how much we loved Michael. It never dawned on them that a boy professing his love for the “King of Pop” was odd, it was just something we had in common. In hindsight, it should have been a great indicator that I was gay. They were as fleeting as my relationship with BJ.
The Unexpected Bond Formed Over an Egg
Failing sixth grade wasn an eye opener. To use an old saying, “it took the wind out of my sails,” rather quickly. I didn’t know that Wesley would stop talking to me until the first day of school. I saw him and tried to say hello, he walked past me without even acknowledging me. He started hanging out with the skater crowd and I wasn’t worthy, any longer. Those first months in school were horrible. I felt alone, for the first time ever.
I did not talk to most of my classmates for a long time, that was until the Autumn Equinox in Science class. You are probably sitting there thinking how odd that is how I remember it, but when you hear the story you will understand.
Mrs. Brennan taught our science class and, on this particular day, was teaching us about the division of day and night created by the equinox. She split us into groups and gave us an experiment. We had to balance an egg on its end and track how long it would stand that way. David was my partner and had a very pleasant disposition. He made jokes anytime he could. He was also smart and, in a way, he challenged me to be smarter. That experiment started a new friendship that only grew from that science class. He invited me to spend the night with him and I was excited for a new friend. One that seemed interested in who I was. That afternoon, I excitedly shared the news of my new friend, with my mother. That was when I found out that she had gone to school with his mother. Again, he was deemed safe.
I honestly thought that David would be a friend for life. He never made me feel bad about falling behind. He was always positive and encouraging. Even when we graduated and I left to go to college half way across the country, I knew we would remain friends. My third year in college, I finally came out. I confided in David, before I told many others. I hoped he would not turn away from me. I had read so many things about coming out and losing your friends and family that I was terrified. He just smiled and said it didnt make a difference to him. When I came home from college that summer, he did not return my calls. I later found out that he told his mother that I was gay. She confronted my mother about her gay son being friends with her son. She didnt want her good son influenced by my evilness and that it was a reflection on my upbringing. Not only did my friendship with David end, but my mother told her off and ended their friendship as well.
To college and beyond
College was as awkward for me as sixth grade was. I wanted a fresh start in a new town, away from all of my awkward feelings. So, I applied to a college in the Midwest, specifically in Dubuque, Iowa.
College freshman orientation was a nightmare for me. By the time my parents dropped me off at school, I was miserable. I didn’t come out of my room, I felt so out of place that all I wanted to do was hide. There was an event on the Quad that all freshmen had to attend, so I mustered up all my courage and headed out. We were divided by majors and my advisor, Dr Miller, decided to play the matchmaking game. He introduced me to another shy guy by the name of Eric. Eric was from upstate Minnesota and seemed nice, we had the same major, Environment Science with a Biology minor. Oh, did I mention that he also had a car?
We became fast friends. That all lasted until Greek pledging came around. I was tapped to join the Mu Sigma Beta fraternity. Eric, however, was tapped by another fraternity. Pledging, obviously, got in the way of us hanging out. Then,since his fraternity and mine were rivals, that became a rift between us. I think we stayed friends for about two weeks after we were initiated into our respective frats.
My friend pool grew by joining a fraternity, I even became president. During my time with the Mu Sigs, my sexuality became a bigger question for me. I knew there was a decision that I was going to have to make and it could affect a great many things. I started talking to a fraternity brother who was also LGBTQ. He helped me understand what I was going through and change some of my perceptions. We ended up hooking up and then I went on to another frat brother. My life was spiraling out of control in so many ways. The weight of my secret was affecting me. I started drinking a lot, skipping classes, and just becoming bitter and angry. I eventually came out to all of my friends, sobbing in a bar. I fully expected to be rejected, I was not. In fact, most of them were very open and accepting of it. It still affected me a lot, and I ended up leaving college.
Friends for life or a time
In the course of our lives, we meet a multitude of people. Many of them will go on to be in our friend circle for life. Others come and go. Sometimes we have a lot of friends and sometimes we only have ourselves. What we learn, as we grow, is that quality often over shadows quantity. To have a tight group of a few people you can depend on to be there, listen to you rant, and make you see clearly when your head is cloudy is more important than having a large circle of friends that you know very little about. In my fifty years, I have learned to be okay with a small and trusted friend group. If you are in it then you know my loyalty is unquestioning and that is how I prefer to live my life.
What about you? Do you have lots of friends or just a tight group? If you have a large group, how active are you all together? Do you hang out several times a week or only a couple of times every couple of months? If you have a smaller group of friends, what about them makes them so trusted? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thank each and every one of you for your continued support. GayintheCLE is here for you and wouldnt be where it is now if it wasnt for each and every one of you reading these words. You mean a lot to me and my blog. Thank you!!!
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