42 Years of Friendship and Counting

My best girlfriend, Candice Kranz Busch, called me on my birthday to wish me a Happy Birthday. She mentioned that when we become best friends neither of us even imagined we would be this age, much less imagined our relationship would span 42 years and counting. Our mothers were in their 40s when we meet and that was an inconceivable age to us as 16 years old.   

Our Senior Year

 We meet in our Junior Year of High School in Bangkok, Thailand when Candice arrived in 1968. Her dad was with the Army, mine was in the State Department and both were serving in Vietnam during that war.  Our mothers elected to be stationed in Bangkok as that was closest to Vietnam allowing for their husbands/our dads to come home more often that the normal six months. Also our families had previously lived in Bangkok but at different times. 

We become best friends in our Senior year. We were never far from the other, more like two peas in a pod, hanging out together at school, after school, and on the weekends at each other’s homes, mostly hers. We borrowed each other’s clothes and things, told each other our deepest secrets, double dated, and generally supported each other while more or less keeping each other out of a lot of trouble. And yes, there was a lot of trouble to be had in Bangkok during the late 60s. 

After our high school graduation, we went our separate ways though we did try to convince our parents that the two of us should be allowed to travel through Europe on our way back to the States before college. That grandiose plan quickly went up in smoke. Apparently, our parents were much smarter than we thought they were at the time. 

We went to different colleges though we did manage to see each other in 1970. After that point, we lived in different parts of the world, raising our families but that connection between us was always there. Even today, I often marvel that we were able to keep in touch without the Internet, cell phones, low cost long distance calls between states or even to a foreign country. Candice moved around in the States as well as to Europe whereas I stayed mostly in the Los Angeles area moving to various suburbs. 

We saw each other again 20 years later in 1990 at the San Antonio airport. We were attending our first high school reunion. Our reunions are actually a gathering of students who had attended the school in Bangkok, Thailand, and are held in a different city every two years. 

I remember vividly the feeling I felt as Candice walked through the gate. She looked the same, smiled the same, but it was like being reunited with a part of me that had been missing for 20 years.  That night, we stayed up until the wees hours of the morning, playing catch up with each other. And we still do when we first get together at whatever place we meet. 

What was even more amazing is we drifted back to the being the same two teenagers we were in high school. We are still two peas in a pod, hanging out together at our high school reunions. We still share our deepest secrets with each other. We are each other’s go to person for advice and support. We would and have dropped whatever we are doing if either of us is needed, even if it means a flight across the country. 

What makes our relationship even more unique is we have never lived in the same city since we left Bangkok, Thailand, 41 years ago.  We do tend to talk on the phone in a most erratic way in that we will go a month or so without talking to each other to talking every day or even several times in a day for about a week or so. Of course, we text as sometimes that is the easiest way for us to communicate. But even that follows a similar pattern as our phone calls. 

Over the last 10 years or so, we try to see each other at least twice a year. We do travel together or I should say meet in different cities. We both went back to Bangkok, Thailand, for our high school’s 50th celebration in 2002.  We spent almost 2 weeks exploring Bangkok, visiting our old high school, marveling at the new campus, and finding our homes where we lived. 

In Venice

We did finally travel to Europe but not the 1-3 months we wanted after we graduated from high school. Instead, we went to Venice, Italy in 2008 for about a week.  And we have plans to travel back to Bangkok, Thailand, again, maybe in 2012 plus another trip to Europe.   

 
And even though we still live over 3,400 miles apart, she in Atlanta and me in Seattle, I certainly would like another 42 years of friendship with Candice even if that will make us over double what our mothers’ ages were at the time we started to become BFF.