He Returned His Friend’s Sweatshirt 20 Years After He Borrowed It

Every week, The Friendship Files features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.

This week she talks with two men who were close friends in high school in the ’90s, lost touch, and were recently brought back together by a sweatshirt that one of them had borrowed 20 years earlier.

The Friends

Everett Lippel, 38, an HVAC salesman in South Plainfield, New Jersey
Craig Wojcik, 37, assistant director of technology for a school district, who lives in Scotch Plains, New Jersey

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Julie Beck: Let’s start at the very beginning. Where are you guys from and when did you meet?

Everett Lippel: We both grew up in Union, New Jersey, which is maybe a 20-minute ride outside New York City.

Craig Wojcik: We met in high school. I graduated in ’99.

Everett: I graduated in ’98.

Craig: We became close because of theater—we were in plays twice a year and we did choir as well. We were in rehearsal after school from 3 to 7 o’clock; sometimes we were there until midnight. And that became a friendship outside of those programs. Mine and Everett’s relationship outside of the theater was usually going to pick up girls.

Beck: Did it work?

Craig: We were pretty successful.

Beck: What were you guys like in high school? Paint me a picture.

Everett: Craig and I had very different personalities. Craig is tall, skinny, super freaking studly, blond hair. So I’m the short, witty one, brown hair. We would be, like, the straight guy and the slapstick guy, that was Craig and I.

I was super-duper extroverted, loud, obnoxious. Half the people I ever met just didn’t like