No guarantees of fun today. We’re saying goodbye.

No, no—don’t get your hopes up. I’m not leaving. I’ll be here next semester, same Bat-day, same Bat-column. But, like a lot of us, I’ll be plugging away without some good people.

Yes—today’s topic, “Is graduation as finalizing as death on a friendship?”And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s an essay question. So I’ll have at it.

So many faces in and out of my life, some will last, some I’ll just see now and then. I wish I had written that. I’d be sleeping with Christie Brinkley every night. For real.

Since the days of Brathood, when we hung around with Johnny and Tina because they liked Spiderman and Wonder Woman and let us be the Hulk, we’ve had friends. Now we trace the timelines of our lives and find ourselves asking “what happened to?” once too often.

We hold our hands in front of us and weep at the scant number of fingers popping up when we honestly assess the number of people we’ve pulled away from high school, much less grammar school. We wonder if we should bathe more.

From time to time, we trip over a class picture and ask ourselves questions like “I wonder if he remembers the time I locked him in the girls’ bathroom?” or “I wonder if she still pees if you get her laughing real hard?”Ah, the glorious days of youth.

Friends forever. When we first heard those words, every inch of our wee being believed it—from the gum in our hair down to the holes in our socks. Now we hear those two words paired together and we feel the cold winds of contradiction rushing up our shorts.

We ask ourselves why people seep from our lives like grease from a Big Mac. Some of the answers we fess up to are painful. Blame falls solidly and—by golly—downright painfully on our shoulders. But generally, it’s easier to blame the disruptive effects of change. Like graduations. They just jump up and kick the garbage out of friendships.

Sentiments written on the inside cover of a yearbook don’t tie the binds tight enough to withstand the havoc wreaked by a graduation. “We’ll get together over the summer. Keep in touch.” Raise your hands if you wrote it. Whoahey—a veritable forest of arms, I see.

Of course, true friendship never dies. There are those few people who we can see every other Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year and still be able to put our feet up and eat smelly Doritos with.

But then, these folks are as rare as live Sox fans at Wrigley.

So, here we are approaching another graduation. Here at The Northern Star, we’ll see some teammates walk down the aisle and out the door to reality on Dec. 20. The sad fact is, even though most of us will follow them in May, we’re pretty much seeing the last of each other.

We’ll miss Pam “Mike” Schmidt, even if she was the one who tattled on me for dancing on a newsroom desk last fall. And with Daron “Run Don’t” Walker will go such keen phrases as “Toasted” and “What’s up, dude?”

I’ll be losing one of the least aggravating roommates I’ve ever had in Tom “What?” Omiatek. And—what can I say?—will there ever be another pig fanatic at the Star after Louise “Piglet” Koryta leaves? We doubt it.

And then there’s Aaron. This joint won’t be the same without him. He’s one of those people who lights up a room when he walks in. He laughs at a joke, no matter how lame it is. He smiles at you and means it—he uses real teeth.

But no—Aaron is wanted for employment in parts unknown. He says he’ll be back to visit, and he’s being sincere. But we all know his words fly in the face of reality.

Yes, we are powerless. Somewhere, the evil gods of graduation are setting up dominoes and laughing. And so, here’s hoping you never go astray on life’s highway.One more song quote. It’s Friday. While there is time, let’s go out and do everything.