Seeing an old friend

A few months ago, I was going through my grandmother's old slides, and I came across some photos of one of my favorite childhood friends, Jeff Dorge.

I would spend a lot of my summers at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Seattle, and Jeff's family lived across the street. We were the same age, and we became fast friends. We would go fishing, bike riding, skateboarding and camping together - basically, the entire time I was at my grandparents' home, I was hanging out with Jeff. His family moved south of Seattle a few years later, but we would still get together pretty regularly whenever I'd visit my grandma.

Some of my fondest childhood memories were of my friendship with Jeff.

So when I ran across those photos, I got to wondering what happened to him. I searched Facebook - no luck. But after a little digging in Google, I thought I'd found a good email address for him (based on his parents' and siblings' names). A couple of days later, he emailed me back.

Turns out his family travels to Montana on a regular basis, so they drive right through the Tri-Cities, so we made arrangements for him to drop by. Today, I got to see Jeff for the first time in nearly 30 years and meet his wife and five children. Niranjana made new friends while Jeff and I caught up and reminisced.

Below is a photo my grandma took in 1975, followed by one Melissa took this afternoon. I don't think we've aged a bit!