The SAGE Connection

Best friends forever…

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The younger set has an abbreviation for it – BFFs.

The younger set has an abbreviation for almost everything these days.

We old-timers prefer whole words and sentences. We have used them most of our lives, although we did have some expressions we used in place of the four-letter words so frequently heard today:

“Gee whiz”, “my golly” and “bitchin”, when I was a teen, were the most common in my set of friends. Of course, we never used the ‘b’ word in front of our parents.

As a child, most of us received spankings somewhere along the line. Switches, which we were sent outside to retrieve, fly swatters and wooden spoons were probably used the most often.

Our mothers fried everything in bacon grease or lard, ironed our sheets, pillowcases and clothes, including our underwear, after taking them off the clothesline.

Our fathers allowed us to ride in the back of pickups or sometimes, for short distances, on the running board outside the truck door.

Most families only had one vehicle until we were older. By the time I reached my teens, the '56 Chevy was all the rage.

As teenagers, we drank fountain Cokes, dipped our fries in our milkshakes, ordered root beer floats from the A&W carhops and spent Saturday nights either at the movies or the skating rink. My generation dreamed of being Sandra Dee or James Dean when we grew up.

Some of us were more adventurous than others – sneaking cigarettes from their parent’s pack and sipping Boone’s Farm wine on the sly. There were the good kids and the bad kids and the two rarely mixed – and if they did, they kept it very quiet.

I spent my teenage years in Huntington Beach, California.  It was a very tiny town back then – and it was the “surf city” all the singers sang about.

On the days when the surf was exceptionally high, the high school principal could be found on the pier with his binoculars and a notepad, busily scribbling down the names of all the surfers who should have been in school, but weren’t. The next day the errant surfers would return to school with a signed parental note excusing their absence and foil the poor guy again.

While other schools bragged about the number of their graduates going on to college, our teachers bemoaned the fact their students’ life goal was to make it to Hawaii to surf the big one.

Movies and skating rinks were replaced by nighttime bonfires on the beach and coffee houses with folk singers, up and down the coast, when we were old enough to drive.

Of course, many of my classmates did go to college and some made it to Hawaii. Some married young and some married later, but most married. We had children who spent their babyhoods together and some are friends until this day.

Distance, death and life adventures changed all of us as time went by but I still have friends from the good old days.

We laugh about the innocence of that time and enjoy sharing the memories. We wonder what happened to those we have lost contact with and hope they found whatever they had hoped for in life.

We have come to terms with the differences we may have had over the Viet Nam War. Almost everybody lost someone…

As we have grown older, we have found we are somewhat out of our depth these days – stunned by recent events at our nation’s Capitol and all the anger that fills the air today.

We sometimes grieve for all the things that were lost from our time in the sun. In many cases, it seems that things have replaced people. Casual and long deep conversations have been replaced by the three t’s - Texts, Twitter and Tic Tok.

Families have moved great distances from one another and rarely have a chance to get together. Family members and friends pass on but memories remain.

If your BFFs are still around, cherish them. Speak to and of them often.  We really were the best of friends…

Kathleen Anderson writes this column each week.  Contact her at  kathleen@theJOLTnews.com or post your comment below. 

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