When kids do battle with the drama inherent in high school attendance, there’s an almost universal mantra adopted by their parents: In a few years, this will end, and you never have to see these people again. 

Several decades out of high school, I can attest this is “mostly” true. 

Like any survivor of the ordeal that is being a teenager, I can fully admit there are some people I’m distinctly happy I no longer encounter on a daily basis (in all fairness, there are likely people who’d put me on their own “happy to forget” list). Nor can I deny that there are others who I’m sad I don’t get to see often or — in the case of those lives lost much too soon — ever again. 

The ties that bind us to the ones who knew us when we were learning to know ourselves can be hard to deny. 

Sitting outside a frozen yogurt shop some four hours away from home this weekend, I was reminded just how meaningful those ties can be. 

A family visit to our daughter at college happened to coincide with “accepted student day,” a day that drew a slightly younger high school friend who has been accepted by the same university. The two had met up months earlier when my daughter gave this friend a campus tour, and the teens jumped at a chance to see each other again, even if it was just for a few hours over frozen yogurt. 

Listening to two people who have known each other since they were 7 and 5, respectively, was a bit like listening to two people converse in another language. They’re bonded by inside jokes, matching connections to friends and acquaintances, and a set of experiences common only to a select group of people who attended the same school and rode the same school bus over the course of a decade. 

This connection was made all the more obvious because just hours before, I’d listened to yet another language being spoken — the language of two college friends who have formed their own bonds over the course of two years, have begun to build their own inside jokes, own matching connections, and shared experiences. 

Being a kid is hard, and it can be made all the harder by the insular nature of elementary and secondary education. When we’re fully grown and struggling to get along with others, we can change friends, change jobs, change location. Our kids don’t have the same autonomy. 

We need to give kids both perspective and hope for a future where things will be easier. Yes, there will be a day when you can put bullies and small-minded jerks behind you. Yes, you will find a whole world of people out there who “get” you and value the special you that you are. 

But you’ll never quite say goodbye to that language. 

Perhaps you’ll even find out that the ties that bind us to the ones who knew us when we were becoming who we are now don’t have to constrict us. 

Sometimes they are what give us shape.