Some days back, I was with my daughter in her basketball class when it suddenly started to rain. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to drop in into my friend's house that's near the basketball court. I introduced my daughters (the younger one had also come along) to my friend, met her son, chatted for a while and returned home. My daughter was keen on knowing more about this friend of mine - after all, she was meeting her for the first time.
I told her she was my classmate from college. She then wanted to know if this classmate had been a friend then.
Now, this really set me thinking. Back in college, in a class of about 60-odd students, I was part of a group of 8 friends - the close knit group that only school or college kids can form - meeting each other daily, sitting together, having lunch together, bunking class together or giggling and laughing together at our own jokes. All the others in the class were, well, classmates, I guess; or simply put, 'plain' friends and not 'close' friends.
But now, after several years out of college, all classmates seem to be like good old friends. Isn't that strange? I guess a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have known each other for over 5 years, have shared the same classroom, have spent the same time growing up and of course have a lot of common friends and common experiences. The memories of things we did and enjoyed as college students wipes away the imaginary boundaries that we had earlier created when forming groups in the class. Now, we think of everyone in the class as just one big group of friends!
Also, having moved on in life, we collect and make more friends - so they are now broadly categorised as friends from school, from college, from office, neighbours, etc..
So, coming back to my daughter's question, I told her she was a 'classmate' then but now she's a friend!!
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