Remember when you had big hair and thought those bright green pants were really cool? Somebody does!

How about the time you walked into a locker because your high school crush just made eye contact from down the hall?

One of the advantages of having long-time friendships might not be so obvious: old friends can serve as walking time capsules.

Did I really walk into a locker? My friend Craig would probably attest to picking me up off of the floor once or twice.
Many years have passed since I met Craig in the sandbox at preschool or since my friend Phil and I clocked hours and hours driving to nowhere with the radio on.

Old friends give life continuity. Any given moment may feel like a whirlwind while we are in it. But tally all of those events together and you get a lifetime. The plot reveals itself only after all of the little moments are strung together and that happens through conversations with old friends.

The interplay of the past mashed into the present makes me feel like I am starring in my own version of the time-splicing comedy The Wonder Years.

There was the episode in which Craig stole my girlfriend in the second grade by standing on his tippy toes at snack time and planting one on her.

He got up as much height and confidence as he could muster and declared that she was his princess and that he could be her knight in shining armor and then SMOOCH! She was no longer mine.

I tried fighting fire with fire and whipped my newly-exed-girlfriend into the hallway to see if I could steal her back with another kiss.

“But he kissed me first,” she said.

Oh well. My consolation is the voiceover by modern day columnist me who has omnipresent knowledge of other victories, like the night of my eighth grade dance.

This episode has a familiar start: boys on one side of the room, girls on the other. Phil and I needed a plan. That plan hatched in the bathroom where we taught each other how to dance.

In the boys' room, we practiced how to move and how to act. Phil came up with sage advice.

“If you don’t know what to say or where to look, stare up at the ceiling,” he said.

And with that plan in place I rolled up the sleeves on my linen Don Johnson suit and strutted out of the bathroom while Miami Sound Machine's "Bad Boys" blasted over the PA system in the gym. It was my 80s equivalent to John Travolta’s "Stayin Alive" strut from a decade before.

“There was so much electricity,” said Phil on the phone last week. "I got to dance with my crush to that Heart song 'These Dreams.' It was one of the most magical moments in my life.”

Phil got to dance with the girl of his middle school dreams and I got the last laugh on Craig as I danced with the girl I lost during that fateful second grade snack break.

Time capsules are not just for remembering. They are also designed to display who we are and the accomplishments that we're proud of.  I am proud of all of these memories, even when they displayed klutziness or fear, in the long run they were also noble.

They were noble because they were honest attempts to step into the future. Friends like Phil and Craig have been helping me do that for a long time now.

For more of The Joy of Life, visit genemyers.com.