You Never Really Forget Your ‘Growing Up’ Friends

Those were the days …

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

(Grown up) Gordie LaChance, “Stand By Me”

The older we get, the more we need those who knew us when we were young.

Mary Schmich, former columnist, Chicago Tribune

Well, you're really growing up, Margaret. No more little girl.

Mr. Simon (Margaret’s father), “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”

For several weeks now George Harrison’s “What is Life” has been the song I can’t get out of my head. The song is the soundtrack for the television advertising for the movie version of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” and it’s one of those songs that sounds like its era. I pegged the sound for the early 1970s and that’s when Judy Blume’s book first published.

I knew it was a book about young girls coming of age. Then I realized that, while coming of age is a timeless theme, Margaret and her friends were my peers — we were coming of age in the same time period. Suddenly I was interested in what girls my age were thinking back then, so I downloaded and read the book (it’s a quick read) and …

It turns out we were thinking a lot of the same things. Physical and physiological differences aside, we were wondering about the changes in our bodies and the changes in our feelings, especially about the opposite sex. (I was glad to learn that girls were as mystified about themselves as we boys were mystified by them.) We were all learning life lessons, and some were even starting to take hold.

I’ll say that like Margaret but for very different reasons, I was struggling with issues of faith through that time. Like Margaret, I felt closer to God when I was alone. Like Margaret, I felt like God punished us — sometimes in a big way — for seemingly minor transgressions. I’m not sure how much different I feel now. I wonder where Margaret wound up in her quest.

As a group, though, my friends and my interests were more earthly, more prurient, and our collective knowledge didn’t add up to much. So we took what we heard from older boys (because THEY knew so much — or so we thought) and what we read in books and magazines, added some imaginative detail and did the best we could.

We were always on the lookout for any attention from a girl, and not real sure what to do when we found some.

My first kiss was in the woods behind the subdivision near my house, the subdivision and woods where I spent a lot of time growing up. I remember it well and I liked the girl I kissed (and who kissed me back), although like a lot of boys that age, I had weird ways of showing it. Her family moved away not long after that (unrelated to our kissing) and I haven’t seen her since. I hope she understands.

It wasn’t all about the opposite sex for me and my friends. There was other adult behavior to be sampled. During our campouts you earned a badge of honor if you simultaneously could chew tobacco, smoke a tipped cigar (or cigarettes) and drink a soft drink. I did it but never liked it, mainly because I never really liked chewing tobacco. Most of my adult male relatives chewed and I grew up desperately wanting to like it but I never did. I much preferred smoking. Yeah, that’s better.

“Margaret” is set in the titular character’s sixth-grade year, and I remember quite a bit about my sixth-grade year. At Homestead, sixth grade was the year you went down to the junior high, where you changed classrooms and teachers, depending on the subject. Only my year, for some reason, we had a sixth-grade class up with the elementary school, with a single teacher and no classroom changes. I was in that class.

Like Margaret in the book, we also had a new teacher, Mrs. Burton. I liked Miss Burton (every female honorific was pronounced Miss) because I learned so much that year. Miss Burton taught us poetry. She brought us some culture (art, song standards, etc.). She taught us definitions of words we were already using but really didn’t know why. I’m sure the class wasn’t  easy to manage but I don’t remember any particular incidents. Most of us had been going to school together since first grade.

And most of us would go on to high school together, although we drifted apart as time went on. After graduation we got on with our lives and only occasionally see one another. It takes work, effort to reconnect but it’s always worth it. No matter what you might have done with your life, they knew you “when.” They know the authentic you, who you were as you were learning to be a person, a grown-up person.

If you’re lucky they won’t hold it against you.

rpdgraham@gmail.com