I got this email from an old friend the other day. He was moving out to the West Coast and wanted to meet for coffee, catch up and maybe go see a ska show together. I was disturbed. I thought he, like the rest of my high school friends, had died. This isn’t because New Jersey is a hotbed of cars exploding due to mob hits, people jumping out of buildings to avoid mob hits and cars exploding out of buildings into crowded mobs. Instead, my high school friends have occupied a secondary space in my life for the last four years.

I’m here to tell you: Your high school friends aren’t dead. They’re more like undead. Zombies, really. They’ve existed as half-lives, being relegated to interactions on vacations and scattered disturbing phone calls. They’ll call you, moaning and incoherent, and you could swear they resembled their former living selves, but it’s a party and it’s loud so you have no idea what they are saying. Something about “dude” and “remember” and “totally.” You tell them that you’ll keep in touch, while quietly loading your anti-zombie crossbow.

But now that you’re going to leave the sanctuary of college, things have changed. Your high school friends are beating down the doors and they want their copy of “Boondock Saints” back. Also, braaaaains.

After college, your social calendar is about as dead as Woodrow Wilson (too soon?). So, you decide to reconnect with your old friends. You first make contact in any number of ways. You Facebook them. AIM them. Run into them at the local Starbucks. You ask: “I haven’t seen you in ages. What are you up to?” They reply: “Working at Starbucks.” The situation becomes awkward. “Oh. Yes.” “Yourself?” they ask. “Robbing a Starbucks.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, you are all going to be in a similar boat next year. Not much sense differentiating where you went to college, because you’re going to need an entirely new social network. No, don’t worry, you can still have the Facebook. (Let’s not go crazy here.) Yet, if picking up romantic engagements is hard, how the hell are you going to find a new crew of people to get drunk and play Halo with? That’s where the high school friends come in handy. And, likely, an Xbox.

You have some things in common right away. You all need food. You all reference TV shows with the same annoying regularity as in high school. You all graduated thinking that you would be “consultants” but then realized that no one actually does that.

Of course, there will be some tensions between your college friends and your high school friends. They’re like oil and water, Jets and Sharks, Stormtroopers and Calvinism. They don’t really mix. Your high school friends root for some other college sports team, which is wrong. It’s like hearing that at their college they were taught 2 + 2 = fish. It doesn’t sound right. You can’t wrap your mind around it. So you wear your college T-shirt more than you did while attending the school and rub in victories of your team like it actually mattered. This cycle actually will hold steady for the rest of your life, particularly if you’re from the South.

Your high school friends and your college friends will compete for your attention. It’s an uglier, unshaven novel of manners and they are suitors for your love. Like annoying hipsters, they’ll try to one-up the other in terms of obscure knowledge. In this case, it is shared experiences of profoundly noteworthy moments of your life: “Dude, I was there when Chris laughed so hard in the cafeteria he peed his pants.” “Yeah, well, dude, I was there when Chris got sexiled by his roommate who was hooking up with his crush.”

You think about making some new friends.

With graduation on the horizon, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. My high school friends will be re-animated, and likely part of my life once again. Likewise, the people around me that I’ve seen in the Quad, slept on their couches and cheered with during basketball games — some of them might be relegated to the half-life status of their high school peers. As we scatter in this dark landscape, it’s nice to have someone who knows the endings to your jokes, who’s been with you in those concert pits, who is going through the exact same stuff you are. You don’t have to contact these people though. You lost their copy of “Boondock Saints” a while ago.

Oh! Look at me! I’m using zombies in a humorous manner! I’m so not cliche! Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.