BS: Your longest relationship

Subject: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Wesley S
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:38 PM

I just exchanged e-mails this morning with a woman I've known since the third grade. So thats getting close to 50 years. We don't communicate often but we are still in touch several times a year. I have another friend I have more regular contact with – almost on a monthly basis – that I've known since high school. So I was wondering – outside of members of your family – what is the oldest relationship that you have {guitars and fiddles don't count}.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Alice
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:42 PM

Our neighbor who lived next door to us when I was in high school is still a good friend. I have traveled with her lately since she retired. I would babysit her daughter when I was in high school. She hired me to work as her secretary in the governor's office my first summer out of high school. I moved away to go to college but we have remained close friends.
About 40 years.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Peace
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:44 PM

Forty-three years with a fellow who lives in California. Met in NYC and have been friends ever since.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:48 PM

Next door neighbour, actually across the street, since I was 6 months old. Obviously I don't remember her from then, but my earliest memories do include her and I just spoke to her on the phone this past holiday season. So almost fifty years. And, her sons, but I don't really have any contact with them.

The daughter of another old family friend, though I don't think we actually got to *know* them until I was about 2 or 3.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: DebC
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:48 PM

My best friend from high school and I are still very close. We met in 1969 when he was a friend of my brother's. So that's 49 years.

Deb Cowan

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:48 PM

ABout 48 years, a childhood friend I don't see bot two or three times a decade. Oddly enough, the conversation just picks up where it drops off, as though it was never interrupted. ANother, about 8 years longer, is now just an email. I have a cousin who is fifty, whom I have known all his life. Two, actually.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:57 PM

I'm still in contact with a girl I used to live next door to when we were babies. We grew up together and have fond memories of that time. We generally communicate via email. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing!?!

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:00 PM

That would be with my parents, and one of them is still alive.

Other than that, I had about a five year relationship with one girlfriend, and I have had friendships that lasted, oh, 25 years or more with a handful of people I got to know, mostly through playing music.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Wesley S
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:15 PM

Little Hawk - I've always considered parents as being kinda like family......

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:17 PM

Heh! ;-) Really?

Okay, so I did not stick to your guidelines, Wesley.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Jeanie
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:23 PM

My friend Lena, who I sat next to on our first day at school, September 1958. Goodness...that'll be fifty years this year. Just like Amos said, although we haven't seen each other regularly since our 20s, whenever we do meet or talk, there is a great familiarity, as if gaps in time don't exist.

Throughout her life, my mother kept up nearly weekly phone calls and regular letters with someone who she had also met when first starting school. A couple of years before she died, I took her to visit the lady - they hadn't actually seen each other then for quite a few years - and it was such a thrill to see them chatting away and almost becoming young girls again. My mum died 3 years ago, but this lovely lady is still alive, aged 89, and I have kept up the contact with her.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: fat B****rd
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:23 PM

My sister, she's 75 and she's known me since I was born.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: akenaton
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 03:41 PM

A good number of the kids I went to school with in the fifties are still close neighbours and friends.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: *Laura*
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:04 PM

It's not actually my relationship so it's cheating, but my great grandpa died in feb aged 100. My great grandma is still alive, aged 98 -they'd been together since just before her 18th birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:08 PM

I've known and (mostly) liked me all my life.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: DebC
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:12 PM

Oops, my math was off. Forgot to borrow. That's 39 years :-)

Deb

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: *Laura*
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:13 PM

Mine isn't very long in years I guess but in percentage of my life - me and my best friend 'met' before we were born - our mums were in the same anti-natal class!

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:15 PM

...anti-natal class!

Your mothers were learning how not to give birth, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Becca72
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:43 PM

I've known my friend Alyson since kindergarten and my friend Janet since 1st grade so that's 31 and 30 years respectively. We still speak daily and see each other often.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:48 PM

Let's see -- one good friend from high school (met freshman year, 1962). Occasional phone calls, sporadic letters, cards, email and when I'm in Milwaukee we get together for a road trip to someplace interesting -- an iris farm, House on the Rock, or just shopping in a town with an interesting restaurant and lots of cheese. That looks like we've known each other for 46 years!

Got another good friend -- constant emails and phone calls, but we're no longer living close enough to see each other that often -- that I met when he came into the carpet mill store I was managing (c. 1974) and wanted to buy a gazillion square yards of "Herald American blue" -- and I knew what color that was.

And a former employer now a good friend whom I originally met (and went to work for) around 1976.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:50 PM

Limpit and her friend Beth have known each other since before they were.... as for me, I fell in love with Sean Connery when I was 11 and it's been a hopeless case ever since... 33 years worth now :D

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: artbrooks
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:01 PM

I have known my mother for my entire life - I have known my father for a slightly shorter period of time (fathers were not allowed in the delivery room back then)

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:06 PM

I still correspond occasionally with a couple of women friends from my days in Kansas whom I met 'about' 45 years ago,..... and I still see semi-regularly a guy I went to college with and worked with and who enabled me to move to the DC area. We met in 1965. I was with him at our folk festival all last week.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Bee
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:18 PM

36 years, one of my best friends, lives not far away. One person from highschool(grad 69) I see every couple years, we like each other but aren't close.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: PoppaGator
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:26 PM

Several years ago, I reestablished contact with a number of friends from my high school class, and we still stay in touch. We met each other in September of 1960 ~ almost 48 years ago!

I've been wracking my brain to try and remember if I have any kind of contact with anyone I met earlier than that (except of course for family). Kids from grade school and/or any of several neighborhoods. Can't think of a one.

Of course, I have moved great distances during my lifetime; I've lived on the east and west coasts and the midwest, besides New Orleans where I've lived since 1969.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:33 PM

Thanks to the Internet, I'm in touch with people I knew in (rarely primary, almost all) secondary school, but my sister is still in touch with her best friend from grade school, whom we knew before we even moved to Africa. We see her at family parties, she's known me pretty much since I was born. And 2 of my sisters' high-school exes are also very close family friends, and they've known me since I was 11. And my African "parents" have known me since I was 5.

What is fun is seeing people who've known me since I was younger than my kids are now!

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Rasener
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:46 PM

46 years - big mate of mine in Birmingham UK. Still in touch.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: ranger1
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 06:43 PM

I'm having coffee with my best friend on Sunday. We met in kindergarten, lived two houses away, both moved at different times during our kindergarten year to houses a quarter-mile apart. We don't see much of each other now, but when we do talk, it's like we've never been apart. We still finish each other's sentences, 34 years later.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: gnu
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 06:45 PM

Dad. I was born March 7, 1957. So, June 7, 1956 or close, I was at Dad's place.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 07:02 PM

48 years. Met the guy in 1960 when we were students in Chicago; we were roommates for one year. We've always kept in touch, and I dropped in to visit for a couple of days on my vacation in the summer of '82. He was booked up one of those evenings, so he set me up with a date for that time slot; the upshot of that was he was best man for that young lady and me, in December '83. The young lady didn't want to move to Chicago, where I was living, so I moved here. When we shopped for a house, we ended up within half a mile of said oldest buddy. Still see him often, but i don't see as much of him as I do of the lady he introduced me to...

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 07:26 PM

ooooooooo, about 6 inches....

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Slag
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 08:18 PM

Well my childhood sweetheart. But the restraining order only allows me to be withing 500 feet of her at any time. Sigh!
















JUST KIDDING! For crying out loud!

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 09:25 PM

My best friend from high school is dead -- throat cancer from smoking. My best friend from grade school is dead -- stomach cancer from smoking.   Another friend from high school is dead; a needle in his arm and laying in a closed room in cheap boarding house in Indianapolis for four days in July.

My closest friends are my siblings and my wife.

Unless you count being friendly with the Grim Reaper...I've know him, her, or it since I was five years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 10:35 PM

My used-to-be-my-very-best friend is still a close friend today- 58 years later. She lives in Virginia, I in Alaska. We still do the twice a year phone call, her birthday in August, mine in November. We've seen each other perhaps a half dozen times in the last 50 years but just as reported above, we pick right up where we left off. It had been 43 years when we first met again and within five minutes I remembered why I had loved her so.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 11:55 PM

I had a pal that I ran around with when I was a kid. He grew up to be a a**h***. Haven't seen him in years and don't really care to. However, his mom and mine live in the same retirement center. I see her whenever I visitn Mom. Nice lady. One day she told me that it would probably be okay if I called her by her first name since we have known each other for 50 years. I couldn't do it, but it was nice of her to offer.

Michelle has me beat. She still keeps up with the kids from the old neighborhood. There are a bunch of them that went all the way through school together, still correspond regularly, and get together occasionally for parties. Amazingly she was even in the hospital nursery with some of them and can claim to have known them from birth.
- Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: open mike
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 02:14 AM

I was with my ex-partner for over 25 years...that is a long time for a relationship these days....

Also I have been with (most of) the same land partners for over 30 years on the property we have together. There are 8 partners.

I often "chat" with the woman who was a neighbor she was born in 1952 and I in 1953 and we have known each other since then. We e-mail or
"instant message" each other occasionally when we see each other is on line.

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 08:43 AM

I had, until maybe three weeks ago, two friends from grade school days in Minnesota, one of them in California and one still in Minnesota. The one in California just died, but I'm in regular contact with the other, in Minnesota. That's about sixty-three to sixty-five years or so.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 08:47 PM

friends from an organisation I joined in 1980. I left the organisation about 15 years ago as I was no longer actively collecting, but saw members at fairs & shows over the years.

Last year I rejoined (I'm now member 1665 instead of 135)

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 11:37 PM

A friend of mine is about 93 now, and she was my parents' friend and took care of me from very early, probably before I could toddle. Her children are considerably older than I, but we've all stayed in touch all of my life, anyway.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:01 AM

I know someone who's been deeply in love for over 60 years.

(With himself)

Subject: RE: BS: Your longest relationship
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:27 AM

I have several friends still around from grade school times, and "renewed acquaintances" with a few at a 50th High School Reunion a few months ago.

While I can't say we've stayed in close touch, I'm quite sure they remember me all too well, since none have answered any of my calls or emails since the reunion. (But I still think of them as friends.)

The longest term among that group of whom I have really fond memories would be a couple of "friends" of about 64 years span, but the "closer ones" only go back about 55 to 58 years.

A somewhat surprising aspect of old-timerdness is the number of friends who were in close proximity, and could have been friends 60 years ago; but whom I didn't meet until about 30 years back. We have "memories in common" and friends in common that go back much further than our acquaintance. We can reminisce about identically the same "good old days" even though we went through them somewhat apart, and in some cases saw them somewhat differently.

John