BY RENEE BACHER
On? day. my best friend accused me of heinous behav
ior: she called me ''conventionally unconventional It
wouldn’t have hurt so badly to have been thrown into
this broad category, which includes hippies, punks, com
munists and anyone who wears more than two earrings,
if it had been done by someone other than Julie, whom I've
always considered.my soul mate, the one person who can see
beyond the. trivialities of appearance. Yet over the past three
years, the many miles that separate our respective universities
and the politics of our collegiate friendships have made it
increasingly difficult for us to retain our old school tie
/v__i___
VHCWi Hie cav ucoii ci o ui
friendships is the style one develops in or
der to adapt.to one’s college environment.
Mine consists of a state school in a rural
town, where my peers are concerned with
the evils of capitalism. Hers consists of an
Ivy League school in a city, where her peers
are concerned with the joys of capitalism.
While she goes on dates in BMW’s, I travel
in pickup trucks While her friends spend
winter break in Palm Beach, most of mine
stay home and get a job.
Although we grew up in the same socio
economic stratum (somewhere in the mid
dle of our two collegiate extremes), we soon
had trouble remembering where we had
been ahd could only see where we were at
present. When I visited her, I thought her
friends were affected and snobby; when she
visited me, she thought mine were naive
and hicky. At times we couldn’t get past
these superficialities. I made fun of her
manicures; she laughed at my hairy legs.
Tbs Anwar ta AM Qaastfen': It used to be
that we wouid sit up iate at night, with cups
We’ve developed
different values, but
we’re still the same
ui u?a, uj aigcuss impuru&m. imn#» riv
would joke about someday stumbling across "The Answer to All
Questions.” We talked about feelings, theories and intellectual
izations. We were not adolescents, we were planets in a vast and
lonely universe shedding brilliant beams of light for each other
With our new differences, though, we began to have trouble
connecting. For me that meant darkness.
I told her she waq spoiled because she didn’t do her own
laundry; she told me I was pseudointellectual for speaking
about politics, which I hadn’t known a lot about. We really did
hurt some good feelingB. Yet we knew it was important not to
lose sight of the best friend who helped develop these feelings in
the first place.
Our differences are really nothing more than a matter of
perspective. We’ve learned to treat what could have been the
end of a friendship as the beginning of a learning experience.
We’ve developed some different values, yet we are still essen
tially the same. One of our late-night discussions about human
nature evolved what we call "The Core Theory." The theory
states that a core is the very center of someone (the soul), and al I
cores are surrounded by a few superficial shells (the personal
ity). The shells can be sculpted, damaged. wnrped or manned,
yet the core is rarely altered The start of our friendship was t he
realization that our cores were a similar shape The near end
was when we viewed the shells, which had been battered by our
new environments, us reflective of our souls. Yet when we
opened our hearts again. the shells became transparent, and we
saw the people we’ve always been A cerebral friendship such as
this was worth preserving at any cost Especially for the low
price of pomp and circumstance
I’ve found that there are other friendships worth preserving
as well, although they may require a lot more work These are
the friendships formed as the result of the common struggle
of growing up In the 12th grade three of my old friends
to brave the other clique*, which had
made us feel individually minuscule We
thought of ournelve« as a small private
company in the midst of conglomerates
But we had fun. We did crazy, silly things
that made high school memorable rather
than miserable We sneaked backstage at
concerts, sat outside in electrical storms,
painted our faces ridiculous colors at
department-store makeup counters. We
made big plans and shared dreams
Opts Mrs. spss hurl: 1 thought I would
never lose touch with these friends, even
though most of us were to attend different
universities in different states. We thought
we could easily remedy this problem with
phone calls, letters and school vacations
Except that the more we talked, the more
we saw how different we were all becoming
Some were pledging sororities, others
trotting off to Europe on exchange pro
grams, still others nurturing all-consum
ing romantic relationships. Nobody could
find the time to get aiong, and many of us
niup}jvu njiruMiin iu rnui uuici .
After I thought about it for a while, I called one of my
alienated friends. "Sandi, 1 know we haven’t spoken in a long
time, for a number of reasons, but I wanted to remind you that
we used to be friends, and anytime you feel like talking, no
matter how much may come between us, I’ll have open ears and
an open heart for you.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly that, but it was some soliloquy to that
effect, and she wound up coming to my house (with Julie) for a
nostalgic chat. Barriers that had been set up were dismantled,
and severed lines of communication were reopened. We
reached an understanding that has yet to be reached with most
of the others. With some I’ve tried; with others the prospect
seems futile. Still, I can’t help but set* personal relationships as
a microcosm of world peace and politics, and I have no desire to
abandon my theory that the only way to learn to love one's
neighbor is to continue loving one's friends
Renee Rat her in a senior, majoring in journalism, at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.