Making old friends gold

What was that song in grade school about  "making new friends but keeping the old, one silver and the other gold " ?

"She's an old friend ",  we often say, but what do we really mean; old as in aged or old having met the person early, early on?

At my advanced age, I remember more friends and classmates from grade school, more than from college. Does memory work that way, or were there just too many distractions and preoccupation in college more that in our younger days?

Thanks to Facebook, a former friend and classmate from kindergarten found me. She now resides in the US but came back for vacation.  I invited her for brunch and we had a lot of time catching up. Knowing that I enjoy being with friends, my caring husband treated us to a late lunch, thus prolonging the reunion till mid-afternoon. I had a great time and I feel good.

I haven't seen this friend since we cried, hugged and said farewell at our high school graduation, except briefly seeing her at a Pantranco bus terminal near our province. TodayI learned that for the passed 30 years or so;  with the exemption of the last four when she retired and left for the US, we practically moved within the same circles,  in fact, we may have even  bumped into each other without knowing it, much less remembering how each other look nowadays.  While we regret having missed the connection for so many years, still life is good, it gave us the opportunity to re-connect.

Finally, again today, when we hugged and said till next meeting, we did not cry, we smiled.