Where Have You Gone Joe DiMaggio?

I have moved around a lot! Since I was a child we were always on the move. Mostly because of my father's job, he was mostly being promoted and had to move to the next level, which usually was a new headquarters in a new city. Here's a brief rundown:

Birth till not sure: Woodhaven, New York/Staten Island, NY
Not Sure till 2nd Grade: DelMar, NY (2 different Homes)
2nd-6th: Bayside, NY
6th-8th: Flushing, NY
9th-12th: Yorktown, NY
I go to college they move to Cleveland, OH

Now that seems a lot to my wife who lived in the same town all her life and that seems a little to my cousin who is a Marine Brat and traveled all over the county. I didn't want all that moving for my child and that was why we bought a house the day he started kindergarten, I wanted my boy to have what I didn't, a stable past. Don't get me wrong, I had an excellent childhood. I make friends easily, I've been places and experienced many things. But the one thing I've always missed is that 'lifelong' friendship that you start in kindergarten and you are the Best Man at the wedding. I've made and lost a lot of friends over the years. I remember my Elementary School Friends, my high school friends, my college friends, my adult life friends. Yet none of them are the same people. Every 4 years it was the same: I was the new kid, made some friends, had some good times and then was gone. While I am to blame for not keeping up with them, distance played a major role in that. I lived in one part of New York and they lived 4-8 hours away. In a time before e-mail, it was very hard to keep in touch. I found a lot of letters last month when my parents basement flooded between me and several of my old friends. They start off 3-4 pages long, but by the end they were post cards and holiday wishes.

It is mostly the High School/College friends I miss. Starting my High School freshman year, to the freshman class I was a sophomore who got left back and to the sophomore class I was just another Freshman. As always I made friends very easily, joined some clubs, hung around the neighborhood, dreamed of the future, but in 4 years we were gone again. My to college and my family left New York for Cleveland. We had a tight group then and I went back every so often during my College years, which was hard as I didn't have family there anymore and nowhere to stay for extended vacations and I had to visit my family in Ohio. Several of our group went back home after college but by then I was stuck in nomans land, return to my 'home' with no job, nowhere to stay or go back to my family and start over AGAIN. I stayed near my college and landed a job, hung with the people I knew for the past 4 years and started building my own family.

Here we are 12 years later and I am in another state, making new friends, and leaving behind people I've known for the past 8 years (longest I have ever been in one place!). I hope I stay in contact with the friends I left behind. It's easier now being an adult I can take some vacation and drive out for a week or take a 3 day weekend for the baseball draft or RenFaire and drop in for a visit.

But if any of the following ever Google themselves and find this, drop a line to an old friend: Mike LoBue, John Newcome, Joe Martin, Vinny Duffy, Kevin Raphael, Terry Peterson, Ed Jakabowski....What have you been doing these past 16 years?