Someone Old. Someone New.

The blog project topic for June 26th, chosen by Melissa: Make new friends, but keep the old....Tell us about your most recent friendship (online or in person) AND your longest friendship.

Someone Old: 
I'm guessing everyone will think I'm going to write about my BFF since I've known her quite a long time (27 years this summer to be exact) and we're so close.  However, there are people I've known longer than her.

Sally is one of those individuals.  I don't necessarily consider Sally a friend anymore, but more of an acquaintance who I use to hangout with a lot when I was in high school.  After high school I talked with her periodically and hung out with her and her friends when I visited Chicago my first 2 years of college.

Sally and I went to preschool together at one of the Chicagoland Jewish Community Centers (JCC) many, many... MANY years ago.  After awhile we drifted apart a bit and then reconnected several years later when we bumped into one another at a local Bakers Square restaurant (a place I used to love getting pie until I started baking pie).  Through the end of high school we hung out on a fairly regular basis.  Then a year or two after I moved away for college we lost touch.

These days we're basically Facebook friends.  I did run into her at festival a few weeks ago.  We chatted a bit, but it was a lot of small talk.  It wasn't like if I was seeing someone I was super close with, and we picked up where we last left off.  Our lives are so vastly different.

It's sort of sad, but I have good memories from the past that include her.

Someone New:
Back in April (maybe May) a friend of mine asked me if she could make a "friend shidduch".  (A "shidduch" is typical Yiddish for match two Jewish singles up.)  My friend had a friend at her shul she felt I would get along well with so I said "Sure!"

Guess what?  My friend was right.  Me and L got along famously.  L is a PhD student at the University of Chicago and thought we're 10 years apart in age (roughly) we have a lot of life experiences in common.

Another thing I like about my new friend is that she's an observant Jew, but still very much egalitarian.  She gets the reasons I'm drawn to being more observant and I don't have to feel strange when I want to do something religiously/observant related.  It's nice to known someone who gets little things others would never understand.

Now that I've talked about a person I've known a long time and a person I'm known not so long, please see what my fellow bloggers have to say:

Momarock (Sara)

Merryland Girl (Melissa)

Darwin Shrugged (Denise)