As I stood on the dance floor at my elementary school friend's wedding, I realized that while most aspects of people do not change over time, there are some that do. The early '90s music blasted from the speakers at the banquet and I felt again like the awkward kid I was in Grade 7. I stood off to the side, trying to "dance" but ultimately crippled by the innate dearth of rhythm that plagues so many Chinese. My feet stayed planted to the floor as my upper body writhed in attempt to look like I fit in. But I knew I didn't. The people around me, however, jived effortlessly; I recognized these were the same people who had no problem doing so in Grade 7 either. As I glanced at their faces--slightly aged but in essence unchanged--I relived childhood memories. He was always such a clown: I remember when in Grade 5 he... and also Man, I had such a crush on her, way back when we... The clown is as funny now as he was back then; she's no less cute either. But something was different. In bygone days, I had no problem just hanging out with them; why did the awkwardness linger beyond the dance floor? Though I might still be that shrimpy Asian kid with more brains than looks and even less brawn, I felt there was an inviolable distance that had developed. Looking back, I see that I'm shier, more cynical, more uptight than I was when I was a kid. Had they noticed these changes in me? They probably weren't looking for them--I know I wasn't. When I consider my elementary school friends, I always try to prove to myself how static things are and revel in the security that changes are nonexistent (so long as they are not sought). I perceived my friends now as shadows of what they were over a decade ago and hence convinced myself they had not changed. But that attitude is just a bandage--not that it shields and protects the friendship but that it masks and hides the gaping wound beneath it. My childhood friends were some of the greatest people I knew. But my conceptions of them must be suffused with a current understanding of who they are for our friendships to be more than mere ephemeral recollections of what we once saw and did. I just pray that that happens...