old friends

This weekend I realized everyone has two kinds of old friends.

There are a few friends that I only see once every few years, and after about 5 minutes of 'catching up', we're back into our old conversations and habits as if we see each other every day.

Then there are the majority of my old friends. We catch up - where do you work, you bought a house, maybe had a kid, etc. Then when we run out of that news, which is pretty quick, there's an awkward moment before someone starts telling you about mutual friends you have probably failed to keep up with. But after an hour or so, you realize that you don't really have that much to talk about. You share a few beers, tell a few stories, but it's a struggle to keep any real conversation going. Sometimes you even wonder what the heck you used to talk about when you did live in the same city and see each other all the time.

A couple of my old friends were in town this weekend. They're married and recently had their first kid. I was surprised how quickly they fell into the second category of old friends. These are people that I really dig, and have always enjoyed hanging out with. I think part of it is that they've moved on into the Suburban Phase of Life, where their days are filled with what they're doing with their house now and what's going on with their baby. (The kind of stuff that honestly bores me because I have no interest in Suburban Living whatsoever). It was like a big chunk of their personalities had vanished, although this may have been because they had some family around, too.

I was still really happy to see them, and will probably eventually take them up on their invitation to visit. I had fun with them, but it wasn't the kind of fun we used to have.

I'm finding this happens more and more frequently with old friends the older I get.

I ran into a girl that went to my high school about a month ago. She was a year or two behind me in school, and really weird. Nice, but weird. We weren't friends, but we were both band geeks, so we knew each other and had conversations once in awhile. I saw her in a used book store, and after my shocked "OMG" greeting, we did the catching up thing. She's married and staying at home to write some kind of fantasy stuff, and had recently won an award and was working on getting some stuff published. I told her about my music stuff, and a few minutes later we departed (with a rather formal handshake - did I mention she was weird?).

We only spent a few minutes catching up with each other, but it was far more interesting (to me) and informative than what happens with my old friends. We talked about the stuff we really care about - her writing, my music - and what little attempts we were making to enjoy it and maybe even make some money with it.

Why do people quit talking about interesting things and ideas as they get older?