Emails, essays, problem sets, shopping trips, closing shifts, club elections, Saturday games—as we clamber into adulthood, our lives inevitably clutter up, scattering in countless directions.
Gone are the days of childhood laughter and easy tumbling through jungle-gym palaces. Oftentimes, our ever-shifting trajectories carry us away from the connections of our youth.
Rolla High School senior Braylon Ford has grown apart from the friends of his Colorado childhood due to time and distance.
“There are a lot of my friends from back when I was a kid that I see on Instagram every once in a while, but I don’t really ever talk to them. I feel like location definitely is a big factor in that, because I’ve moved states since then. They’ve done a lot of things that’re the jock type—they’re doing football, doing track, doing all this, and I like to focus more on the technology and the grades and classes and all that,” Ford said.
Ford stays close to his current Rolla friends, though.
“One of my best friends is John Tumbrink. I met him sophomore year, and unfortunately, he’s graduated now, but I still see him on a weekly basis,” Ford said.
Tumbrink may not literally sit shotgun in Ford’s car often, but their passenger seats do look very similar.
“We have matching cars. I have a 2009 Mustang and he has a 2005 Mustang, and then the same generation, the same color—it’s wild. When I was going and getting my first car, he convinced me to get the same car because our friend Hunter also has a Mustang,” Ford said. “They just asked me over and over and over again until I finally broke and looked on Facebook marketplace for a while. Now, I’ve done so much work to her that I can’t not love her.”
Ford will continue to share community and companionship with his friends long after high school, lounging familiarly in their metaphorical passenger seats.
“My friends and I, we all have the same career idea of engineering, so I’m hoping that we can still make calls, ask about classes, talk about grades, and all that. Every once in a while, I’ll go out and play some magic cards with them, or I’ll just go drive around with them, go grab a bite to eat,” Ford said.
To senior Matthew Lamb, growing older doesn’t necessarily mean that the bonds you build with others will become weaker.
“It depends on how well you get to know the other person. There’s so many ways that people can communicate and maintain their friendship. It’s just how much are they willing to do that,” Lamb said.
In fact, Lamb met his current best friend only recently.
“My best friend, Dominic McPherson—we’ve probably known each other now for about a year. Me and Dominic are friends because we do stuff together. We just have fun, honestly, doing whatever it is, whether that be working out or driving around. Our friendship didn’t take off quite as fast at first, but a few months ago, we just started talking more and more. Then it’s like—here we are,” Lamb said.
Lamb has spent his life moving between St. Louis, Edgar Springs, Newburg, and Rolla. Though he no longer has contact with childhood companions, Lamb feels like he’s only gained more friends with age.
“I feel like it was a little bit harder to make friends in Edgar Springs because I used to live in a bigger city, and then now, moving to a countryside, I didn’t really know too much of anything there…I would say it became easier to make friends as I got older. I feel like it’s more of the factor of maturity. As I got older, I started becoming more aware of myself and I just learned how to work with it,” Lamb said.
Lamb stays connected with friends through a mix of social media and in-person hangouts.
“I feel like it’s way easier to make friends on Instagram or Snapchat rather than in person…but it’s a lot healthier to make friends in-person rather than online. I have a lot of online friends that I’ve never even met in real life,” Lamb said. “I plan on using Snapchat and Instagram just basically social media to maintain [my friendships], whether or not I stay here in Rolla or plan on going to my college in Arizona.”
When they hang out, Dominic often literally finds himself in Lamb’s passenger seat.
“I give Dominic rides a lot, yes,” Lamb said.
Senior Hadyn Brooks, meanwhile, has kept the same best friends since she was young.
“My best friends are Miranda, Madison, and Wyatt, and I’ve known Wyatt since fourth grade, and I’ve known Miranda and Madison since eighth grade-ish. I just love how we can always have lots of fun no matter what we’re doing, whether it’s just hanging out outside on the deck, or if we’re actually going bowling or anything like that. We’re always able to just have a good laugh and make the best out of every situation,” Brooks said.
The passing years have still left their mark on the friends’ relationship, though.
“We definitely have changed in the way that we try and communicate. We don’t get to see each other very often. We don’t have the same classes…And so we’ll do a call every morning before we go to school and whoever can answer that morning gets on, and we talk on our way to school. We also just try and check in on each other every once in a while,” Brooks said. “So I think our friendship has changed, in a sense. We still hang out, we still talk, but we’ve had to change some of the ways that we communicate.”
In college, Brooks plans to continue calling her friends and making an extra effort to keep in touch—ensuring they’ll always sit next to each other in the car of life.
“We won’t be in the same building forever, so you do have to go out of your way to just send a text or a call or schedule time to meet up because we’ll be all across the U.S. It’ll be more of a challenge when we get older, but I think we can still manage to stay friends,” Brooks said.
Though growing up might mean that the people by your side change or disappear with time, your passenger seat will never truly be empty—not as long as you make the effort to stay connected and forge new bonds, just like Lamb, Ford, and Brooks have done.
