Childhood friends are the sweetest, most devoted friendships that there are. Those relationships that you pick up with other kids your age, while both of you are still young and single and childless. During that time of life there are no romantic or sentimental partners to take you away from each other, no children to occupy all of your time. You don’t have a job or a demanding boss, so your flexible hours let you and your best buddy spend all your time together, inseparable. You can go shopping, to the cinema or just hang out.

Remember when you used to just “hang out” with your friends, on the street, in the malls, by the boardwalk maybe? What happened to those times? What happened to those friends?

Most of my childhood friends now live thousands of kilometres away from me. I don’t know what some of them are up to now. Others share anecdotes and letters through Facebook or e-mail. But we don’t see each anymore, of course, and we don’t hang out together, obviously.

One of my best friends got married to an Australian and moved to the other side of the world.

Another wonderful mate who was inseparable from me also got married. Her new hubby had a dramatically different lifestyle from the one my friend and I were used to. She changed her way of living for him, and now we never see each other anymore. Something about me being too “hippie” for her very formal and reputation-conscious hubby……….

The friends I make now just aren’t the same. Burdened with the onerous task of earning money to support a family, weighted down by drudging work schedules, pressured by sentimental partners to devote more time to them and adapt their activities to the preferences of these partners. The friends you make once past a certain period in your life just don’t have the same devotion and availability. The days when they “hang out” anywhere, with anyone who isn’t a romantic interest, a child or a boss have long passed and washed away down the drain.

I wonder if any of the people “my age” remember what it was like to just “hang out”? To just be around with a friend who wasn’t a child, the mother of a child or a romantic interest? Maybe they’ve just gotten bored with that.