People you grew up with as kid.

Keawyeds said:
Sliding Doors moments.

I remember going home from uni one year and arranging to go for a pint with someone I grew up with. Played on the streets when we were kids.
Even went to the same college.
I went back having actually spent time out of our home town area and experience a bit of the world.
Talking to him in the pub was like talking to someone from a past life.
Sad in a way, but he seemed to be happy what he was doing. It just struck me how suddenly we had virtually nothing in common.
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Happened to me with my brother. Lived all his life in West Cumbria and hardly ever goes anywhere
 


Sometimes pass one of the old townies who was a right worky ticket when we were teenagers , had a few run ins outside the old Lesh and bus station in town .
Now looks like a down n out , seen him walking around with a little dog in tow , sad to see, said alright to each other few year back and I wondered what he’d been through to now look that rough , assumed drugs
 
joebolton said:
I go for a walk with 3 lads I have known for 45 years , every Saturday. I’m 56.

We got this going about 3 year ago , after we lost another mate to suicide. We all felt we maybe should have done more ?

I think life and friends are like a railway journey , sharing a compartment with people.
People get on at different stops , you enjoy the time , then they get off. Others you literally kick them off the train.
Some leave the train and you are waving them off with a tear
Others get off , but get back on again at a later stop.

And the 3 on the Saturday walk , well they are on with me till the end hopefully.

That’s how I see it anyway.
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Good post that and analogy

Think the walk thing is lovely

I got really upset recently about someone who took their own life - quite a long time ago now

I couldn't shake off the sadness that no one would be marking the day. Not that I did much either cept for thinking about him and vaguely checking in with a couple of people - who didn't reply
 
Got 4 good schoolmates I see/contact very regularly, known from very young. Great lads in their own ways, all very differing.

Another mate I didnt know till said alright one day doing schoolrun, had a game of golf, lasses got on n weve ended up doing about ten family holidays, lads weekends away etc. Great lad who I didnt know a decade ago, strange.

Another good mate I seen for first time in 6 year last week. Was a fecking wildman now goes out 3 or 4 times a year. I was in shock!
 
Couple of lads in the same year as me have had half decent careers so far.
Ryan Early acting professionally for a couple of decades now, & Ben Hart co-wrote a book with the lovely Kristen Bell a few years ago.
Lucky so & so..
 
Five-Quarter said:
Some good posts on here. Makes you think

There's that classic line, I'd go back to being 18/21/25 but only if I knew then what I know now ..... Or versions of

I fall into the probably fairly common middle aged male category of a lot of my friends from younger days have now long drifted away

Some gave up on me if am honest because of a period I went through. Thread has made me consider - not for the first time - a few more wrong decisions or the inability to start again and I could have been down a terrible path by now

Partly why I posted my earlier thing to see what reaction it'd get

E.g. one old mate walked past me in the street not that long ago and we didn't even acknowledge each other
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👍
Nobody is perfect, and WE ALL make mistakes and errors of judgement.
The fact that you recognise you made some wrong decisions, means you can learn from past mistakes to ensure you don't keep repeating those wrong decisions.

Keep your chin up mate and keep posting. 👍
 
DaveH said:
I found that as I grew up I grew apart from a lot of mates as my life changed. In college, the people I had been to school with seemed to get very image obsessed and a bit up their own arses. I found I was spending more and more time with a bunch of other people I knew who were a lot more chilled out.

I'm still in touch with a few of them, but lost touch with others when I went to Uni. That was the real defining time when I had become legally an adult and was free to live life how I wanted. To mam wondering if I would be home for tea, etc. I saw a gap opening up between those who lived at home. Those I shared a house with were probably the closest friends I'll ever have and we had a lot of fun.

Even then we are rarely in touch and are scattered all over the world now. Who knows if we still have anything in common, though recently I have been fancying seeing if we can arrange a meet up.
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I still meet up with a group of lads I shared a house with when I did my degree in Preston. We're all approaching or in our sixities now and for the last 10 years we have all l met up once a year for an all dayer. This started when one of the lads we drank with died of a heart attack in his 50s. The all dayers have got shorter for some of them as the years have advanced. I used to meet up with a couple of them regularly in Liverpool or Manchester for a pint and to see bands, but I've moved back towards the north east now so don't see them as often.

I haven't seen anyone I went to scheool with in Northumberland for years, although I do meet up with my cousin who is a bit older than me for a pint and something to eat most weeks.
 
Five-Quarter said:
And me. Was just testing the water to see if there's any kindred spirits. Inspire others to come forward etc
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That's not you.

You are funny and thoughtful and weird and supportive but not a failure.

At least that's what I get from your posts. And i'm never wrong, I've decided.

I am the opposite of most here, you could argue i try to hang on to friendships way after they should be let go. I feel sad when I have to acknowledge it's finished, even if I don't see that person very often. I feel like I am losing parts of my past, my history.

I worry about when my mam goes (for a lot of reasons not just this), cos I wonder how many times will I visit the place I grew up. The place my nana's and Granda's were, aunties and uncles. Still have a brother down there and although we love each other madly we have very different lives.
joebolton said:
I go for a walk with 3 lads I have known for 45 years , every Saturday. I’m 56.

We got this going about 3 year ago , after we lost another mate to suicide. We all felt we maybe should have done more ?

I think life and friends are like a railway journey , sharing a compartment with people.
People get on at different stops , you enjoy the time , then they get off. Others you literally kick them off the train.
Some leave the train and you are waving them off with a tear
Others get off , but get back on again at a later stop.

And the 3 on the Saturday walk , well they are on with me till the end hopefully.

That’s how I see it anyway.
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Oh my god that's lovely
 
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Fletch said:
Sometimes pass one of the old townies who was a right worky ticket when we were teenagers , had a few run ins outside the old Lesh and bus station in town .
Now looks like a down n out , seen him walking around with a little dog in tow , sad to see, said alright to each other few year back and I wondered what he’d been through to now look that rough , assumed drugs
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Alright Pickles
 
I didn’t see any of the people I went to school with ever again when I left in 1970. Except for one time when I went into the pub along the street from where I used to live when I went home for my Dads funeral.

There was somebody from my class who had bought the pub and her brother who was my brothers mate, who I used to hang out with. There was also a lad who used to be my bully, who’d since the, he told me, spent a few years behind bars.

I reintroduced myself to all of them. None of them recognised me, or remembered who I was. I was a shy quiet lad.

They were polite enough to ask me questions and I told them of my various careers and where I’d been since I left school. None of it was very special btw : but this was to people who never left the village where they’d been born and went to primary school. It seemed to surprise them, even though they still didn’t have any recollection of who I was, except that I was the little brother of someone who, I discovered, was well known as the village ‘silent assassin’ type hard man. I was oblivious.
Gelan said:
Everyone I grew up with is dead ;)
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That happens when you’re a prolific international assassin. You have to practice somewhere
CPLforever said:
I worry about when my mam goes (for a lot of reasons not just this), cos I wonder how many times will I visit the place I grew up. The place my nana's and Granda's were, aunties and uncles. Still have a brother down there and although we love each other madly we have very different lives.
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When my 92 year old Mam goes, I won’t ever go back to where I come from. Not even for my siblings funerals. We all moved away.
 
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CPLforever said:
That's not you.

You are funny and thoughtful and weird and supportive but not a failure.

At least that's what I get from your posts. And i'm never wrong, I've decided.

I am the opposite of most here, you could argue i try to hang on to friendships way after they should be let go. I feel sad when I have to acknowledge it's finished, even if I don't see that person very often. I feel like I am losing parts of my past, my history.

I worry about when my mam goes (for a lot of reasons not just this), cos I wonder how many times will I visit the place I grew up. The place my nana's and Granda's were, aunties and uncles. Still have a brother down there and although we love each other madly we have very different lives.

Oh my god that's lovely
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Honest I wasn't posting it for any personal validation, was just curious

Knowing roughly where you grew up, it wont change much. Admittedly it'll have got worse like

See a fair few posts on here from people who have lived away and then go on like they left some sort of zombie hell for a better life. Roots are important I guess
 
I'm in my 60s. During the past 3 years I have lost 3 of my best and oldest friends. Only one best mate left now and he has heart problems. It's the strangest feeling having hardly any mates you trust left. Sad 😔
 
I want nothing to do with those I went to school with, tbf they probably don't want anything to do with me either. I see one girl from seniors every so often but that's it.
 
Partridgeshorts said:
My dad was telling me about working at factory (Parsons I think) in his late teens and he was sent down to London to work for a year with two other lads.

They shared a flat and were thick as thieves for that year. He quite often tells stories about that time and following Sunderland to all the southern away games.

When they come back up here he joins the merchant navy and loses touch with them.

Couple of years ago he bumps into one of the two randomly and they catch up. He was told the other lad emigrated to Australia just after their return from London and was killed in a pub fight within a year.
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Aged about 20 working in Norway I met a lad from Immingham who was on the same wavelength as me. Beer, women, nature, beer, women etc. We were good mates for about 10 years then he married a Norwegian, settled down, had kids etc and we started to move in different directions. We still kept in touch but less and less, after not speaking to him for about 5 years I thought I'd contact him through facebook and catch up on what had been happening over the past 5 years. I then found out through his son that he'd died 2 years earlier from cancer. I was gutted, thinking what a prick I should have kept in contact, someone I considered one of my best mates had been dead for 2 years and I knew nothing about it. Some mate I am. Life is short people, make the most of it. Oh and FTM.
 
Five-Quarter said:
Just curious whether anyone would post that they're the failure who no one keeps in touch with as the people they grew up with all rich, famous and massive successes

There will be some people like that hiding on here.

This forum being what it is though, everyone outwardly is the massive success who sees former friends who are now failures and so sneer at them
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Seems to be a lot of ‘Strikers’ with plenty time on their hands….
 
It'sad how quickly life goes by, I remember me ma talking about her mates she grew up with but never saw much after leaving school etc. I remember thinking that'll never happen to me and my mates we'll always knock about etc. fast forward to your 40s and the same thing happened. Life just happens I keep in touch with maybe one or two of the lads I'd known since I were in primary school but the rest some I've not spoken too in 15 years or more. You go from pretty much knowing everything about someone spending most of your time with someone then just never seeing them much for years.

Life really does just happen and happens so fast, in my head I'm still the lad just about to leave school with my life ahead of me, in reality I'm hopeful 🤞already halfway through that life now. It is nice when you meet up though and it maybe years but you slip straight back into where you left off, everyone's just alittle fatter and older.
 
Don’t keep intouch with anyone from school now.
If I see them I’ll always stop and talk and have a bit crack etc. I think in life you find people along the way who on your level and your comfortable with that.


Wouldn’t want to be in contact with old mates from school now tbh, that life has passed.


What I think is crap is lads who have had the same bunch of mates since school and are very protective and militant of that group. Any outsider who might be on the fringes is sharply ostracised. Mental.
It’s generally lads who have very sheltered lives.
 

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