Category Archives: The Old Days

One of my primary goals for this blog has always been to ground it in reality. I want to bring up issues of friendship as they affect us everyday and not get too involved with cheesy clichés or sentimental celebrations of the sisterhood of women. But it’s hard to write about my weekend without veering into sappy territory.

I spent the majority of the last three days in the company of 500 former Tripp Lakers at the camp’s 100-year reunion. More immediately, I spent the time with 13 women—both my age and one year older—whom I’ve known since I was approximately 8 years old. What struck me about the weekend (other than how much we used to do in a day—sailing and singing and enameling, oh my!) was how incredibly natural it was. Staying up late whispering, laughing at Michelle’s rants, pretending to be asleep when our next door neighbor asked us to be quiet. I hadn’t seen some of these ladies in over 10 years, and once we all rolled out our sleeping bags it was as if we picked up where we left off. We didn’t skip a beat.

There is something special about old friends. Not best friends, necessarily, but friends who knew you when your hair was so short that people thought you were a boy (Thanks Mom!). They understand the jokes you make about Tara Gordon, the uber-cool older camper whose long hair you envied (and hasn’t changed!) when you rocked the boy bowl cut.

The only way to describe my weekend is to say I felt like I’d travelled back in time. The taste of the lake water in my mouth, the walk up the hill, and the goosebumps when a moth flew through my shower all made me feel like 12-year-old again. But ultimately the getaway was about the enduring nature of old friendships. If I hadn’t rock climbed or played field hockey, I’d still have left with a sense of unusual satisfaction. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was with my people. We don’t need to talk on the phone, or even see each other once a year. The summers we shared will always be there, and there’s something about people who knew you in your formative years. They know who you were and watched you become who you are.

The point of all this yammering on is that we all have these friends. People we don’t talk to that often—maybe hardly ever—but with whom, when we do see each other, it seems as if no time has passed. What I’m trying to make sense of is what makes for this kind of relationship. Why is it sometimes so awkward when you run into an old pal, and other times it’s frighteningly easy? (I do think there’s something to be said for environment. If I’d seen these ladies on the streets of Chicago, would conversation have come as easily as it did in the place where our friendships originally formed? I think not.) Thoughts?

Today is a day I’ve been anticipating for months. This morning, Sara and I will load a car with sleeping bags and towels and overstuffed suitcases and we, along with two other friends from our summer camp days, will head up to Maine.

It’s the alumnae celebration of camp’s 100 year anniversary. My first summer at Tripp Lake came to a close almost exactly 20 years ago today. I was 8, it was 1990, and my parents had shipped me off eight weeks prior for the first of the nine seasons I would spend there as a camper. (That’s not entirely true. The “shipping off” part, I mean. I begged to go. After seeing how much fun my brother had at his camp I just had to try it.)

If I were forced to pinpoint one occurrence in my childhood that has led to my perhaps unreasonably high expectations of friends, camp would be it.

I grew up going to coed schools. When my mother suggested I attend the all-girl’s academy where she taught I shuddered at the thought. But camp was all girls, and I loved it. I was the one in my age group who got made fun of for worshiping camp so much. (I am not exaggerating. Any ex-camper reading this can attest to the making fun. And yes, I used the word “worship” back then, which now seems a tad melodramatic. But I probably was.)

In retrospect, what I adored about summer camp was how easy everything felt. It wasn’t about boys or clothes or anything other than singing songs (lots and lots of songs) and being with friends. You could just, as Matt might say, “do you.” At least, that’s my memory. Another former camper might tell a different tale.

When you live with other girls for two months, you get pretty comfortable with them. They get to know every part of you– the good, the bad, the crazy– and either they love you for it or they don’t. I mean, it was a girl’s summer camp not a hippie peacefest. There were plenty of fights. But once someone’s seen you have a meltdown because you had last choice signups, your esteem can only go up in their eyes.

For nine summers I lived with approximately six other girls, and each year they became like sisters. Bonding time was never turned off and I got spoiled. My friends were the cream of the crop. And now, 20 years later, I’m wandering the streets of Chicago looking for the same thing.

It’s not a fair request. The level of intimacy that builds between friends in the camp environment has remained unrivaled anywhere else in my life. Hence, why–despite loving it–camp might have screwed with my head: I’m looking for camp-like friendships in a severely un-campy space.

Is there anything or anyone who set your friendship expectations very, if not too, high? Were you a summer camper? Do you think some people’s adoration of camp is just plain creepy?

This past weekend I headed back to a hotbed of friendship: High School.  The ten-year reunion was a great success. Good friends, good drinks, maybe even good food—I wouldn’t know since the salmon skewers were gone by the time I figured out where they were hiding. I got to spend quality time with BFFs and play catch up with those I-like-you-when-I-see-you-but-let’s-not-pretend-we’ll-keep-in-touch-the-rest-of-the-year pals.

When the evening was over, I didn’t find myself reminiscing about lifelong friendships. Instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about a very specific type of relationship. That which, for these purposes, shall hereby be deemed the Vacuum Friendship.

You know the kind I’m talking about. Those friendships that work perfectly in a very specific setting (say, high school) but out in the free world would never survive.

Vacuum friends emerge on vacations, in the office, at support groups, anywhere. In high school I had a wonderful VF on my basketball team. We were good buddies during the winter sports season, and though we were friendly enough the rest of the year, there wasn’t much to talk about when we couldn’t complain about our coach or talk strategy for an upcoming game.

It’s like that episode of Seinfeld when George and Elaine have nothing to say to each other when Jerry’s not around. Their relationship thrived only in the Jerry vacuum.

Going back to high school really brings these relationships to light. Sheltered by the same walls that nurtured friendships in their infancy, conversation flows as if no time has passed. But as soon as you step off school property, there’s nothing more to say.

And then there are those vacuum friendships that you really want to work outside their little Petri dishes, but they just don’t. So what do you do? Adjust? Mature? Move on? Nah. You bring the vacuum with you. I have a buddy from high school I feel incredibly close to, though over the years I’ve realized that ours is a high school friendship. When we see each other even now, ten years later, no matter where we are, we revert back to the teenagers we were. It’s a very specific  relationship, consisting mostly of teasing and acting juvenile. But when the big things happen—weddings, funerals—we’re there for each other. And I don’t mind it so much, until I find myself, an entire decade older, wondering if he’s going to throw my backpack in the garbage can because, you know, that’s what we do.

There’s nothing wrong with a vacuum friendship, as long as you recognize it as such. Sure it’s circumstantial, but that doesn’t make the relationship any less comforting. How fun it was, as a child, to anticipate the reunion with a summer vacation friend. Or, today, to know those 10 miles along the lake will at least afford ample time with the running group pal. Or even to travel back in time a bit, because old friendships sometimes turn you back into the girl you were then, as opposed to the adult you are now.

Do you have any vacuum friendships? Do you find yourself reverting to specific version of yourself when you see old friends? Do you embrace these situational relationships or feel like real friendships should survive in any setting?