High school friends are a subject that many people seem to have mixed feelings about. I have one buddy who will, when the subject pops up, let me know that he is not in contact with any friends from high school at all anymore. I watched as an ex-girlfriend graduated and essentially left all of her high school friends behind, making new friends in college and never looking back. On the flip side, I have a friend I live with in college who frequently has his friends from back home come around pretty frequently, and they’re as tight as can be. I fall into the latter category. I have four friends that have stayed with me through thick and thin since our friendships formed, some of them even before high school.

The earliest of these friends of mine I met in third grade. The only people I’ve known longer than that have been family members. His name is Josh, and I recall his grandmother working at our elementary school, and she always brought him chicken nuggets on chicken nugget day. I was pretty jealous (nuggets are delicious), but we both packed our lunch and I didn’t have a work-at-school grandma to provide free chicken. So he started asking her for extra chicken so I could have some; what a stand-up guy! We’ve since lived together in a house in Columbus, talk at least once a week, and this 14 year friendship probably won’t ever end.

The next of these four friends is Chevie, and we met in 7^th grade. He initially didn’t like me. He always wore this green Superman shirt and a yellow Napoleon Dynamite shirt, and I gave him several humorous nicknames based around these shirts. He didn’t find them funny, and it wasn’t until the next year that he realized I wasn’t making fun of him, but I’m just a goofy guy. From there we were attached at the hip all throughout high school, one year even having every class together. He gave me horrible advice about women, we got into shenanigans and have secrets that to this day still remain between the two of us, and he is one of my biggest supporters as far as making my dreams come true. This guy has always believed in me, and probably will until the day I die.

The next friendship formed in 10^th grade. I was in a drama class with a 12^th grade dude named Carlos who complimented me on my shirt one day. Apparently that was all it took to get into my heart. From there we started hanging out all of the time until we eventually moved in together (almost without even realizing it… but that’s another story entirely). He’s always been willing to help me out when I needed it, and we’re at a point in our lives where although we don’t see each other as often as we’d like because of our busy schedules, I know he’d help me out immediately if I dropped him a call.

The final of these four friends to drop into the bunch was a reverse of the last. This time I was the senior and he was the sophomore. His name was Jake, and he liked awesome stuff like Led Zeppelin and Star Wars, and I just knew we could be awesome friends- but how to go about it? So I creepily stole his phone number from facebook and called him one night and talked about tap dancing amongst other bizarre things. Somehow someway this guy did not find me to be the biggest weirdo on the planet, and we started hanging out in town and walking by cemeteries talking about Hitler and old poetry. Now this is one of the most strange beginnings of a friendship I know of, even I think I sound like a weirdo telling this story, but I’ve since been this guy’s best man at his wedding and have travelled hours to visit him due to his military job, so it’s a friendship that was meant to be.

I value all of my friendships. There is something special and unique about every friendship I have that can never be replicated. But after making an article about college friends, I wanted to take the opportunity to throw a shout-out out there to the guys who have been with me the longest, and guys that I know will always have my back.