When I graduated high school, I left the area for college and, upon graduating college, moved cross country for my first job. Because of this, I didn’t spend much time in this area (where I currently live, and where I lived during high school) after high school, so it wasn’t hard to lose touch with most everyone I knew in high school.
I had a couple guys I was pretty good friends with during high school but, even though we were good friends, we fell out of touch quickly. One guy (Tom) I wrote to occasionally for a year or so, but the other two I don’t recall communicating with at all after high school.
About a year ago, I reconnected (somewhat superficially) with Tom via one of those high school classmates sites. He work was going to bring him back to this area for a week and wanted to get together. Unfortunately, due to several factors, we never actually connected when he was in town last year.
A few months ago, Tom emailed me again and said he would be in this area for a week this month and said again that he wanted to catch up, to which I replied enthusiastically. In light of his upcoming visit, I did a FB search for the other guys, and found them both. I emailed one of them (Sam) as I knew him a little better, and he got in touch with Tim.
So this is great — it’s all coming together. The four of us will get together after all these years! I was looking forward to hearing everything they’d been up to in the ensuing time, what they were doing now, and just rehashing some old stories. I was really looking forward to it.
We met at a bar/restaurant in the area. I was the last one in and, to be honest, walked by them without recognizing them. I was at the bar ordering a beer when Sam comes up and says hi, which made me realize how much they had changed 
. So we all got a beer and found a table.
Unfortunately, it kind of was disappointing from that point forth. We found out that Tom worked for the CDC, as a public health inspector, and now for the USDA. So, unfortunately, the rest of the evening we got to listen to Tom tell us stories about slaughterhouses and salmonella.
Sam made a couple attempts to inquire about what I had been up to, but it was honestly difficult to get a word in edgewise with Tom’s stories about the public health sector. Oddly, neither he nor Tim seemed really interested in catching up. So, I mostly sat and feigned interest, as learning about slaughterhouses, rat dung content in our foods, and other assorted facts along those lines didn’t really interest me.
Since Sam and Tim are local, I would be interested in getting together with them again and really catching up…
Note: names changed to protect privacy, but they all really do have three letter names .
