This is true
If we take the time to see with the heart and not with the mind, we shall see that we are surrounded completely by angels ~ Carlos Santana

Friends aren't always dropped. Time moves on. So do they with it. So people split up. Life happens to them. I've had that happen with some of my friends. I have found it it is not always possible for people to stay in touch.

Gordie and Chris didn't abandon Teddy and Vern. They left Castle Rock and became a successful writer and lawyer. Teddy had a bunch of dead end jobs and Vern was like a factory foreman and they never left Castle Rock.

It's sad but no less true to life. The busboy analogy is brilliant. Sometimes I look back at friends and can't recall names or even faces.

I have two friends that I am still excellent friends with from when I was 14. I have several friends that I'm still in touch with (thanks to Facebook) from college and the biggest single factor is having the same sense of humor!
This positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms!Terry-Thomas about US 1963.Hasnt changed much!

I don't think Gordy dropped his friends, at all. I think, like everyone does in real life, they all had separate paths that they went on. Kids grow up, social issues change, you graduate high school, then college happens. You make new friends. You go to work and then family happens and you become so involved in helping your family grow. Life happens, just like it did for all 4 of these characters, just in different ways. Gordy never forgot his childhood friends.

In Vancouver, BC there is no Middle (Junior High) School. High School was from grades 8 through 12. Some people I was really good friends with in grade 8, I barely even knew by grade 12. Like the previous poster said, it happens.
"Hogs have futures, I don't."
Dr. Johnny Fever

Sounds like they just grew up and grew apart. It happens.
Anyone here mentions Hotel California dies before the first line clears his lips.

I think the relationship with Chris and Gordy was a little more personal than with Teddy and Vern. They had personal talks and cried together in private. Teddy and Vern were on a different level than Chris and Gordy, so they weren't as close.
When I was a kid, we had a gang of 4 and I had a really personal connection with one of my friends (not in that way)in the gang. I still keep in contact with today - He lives in Tacoma, WA.

What I didn't like was Gordie and Chris giving a proper goodbye (handshake, kind words) while they didn't say ANYTHING to Teddy or Vern. I agree with the fact that friends come and go in and out of your life. It's sometimes out of one's control for instance, sometimes you move away, sometimes you go to the same school but class schedules are hefty, maybe meet new people, get a job, or maybe you meet a special girl that you wanna spend all your time with etc.

In the book, it mentions that Vern and Teddy eventually took over the treehouse, made new friends and were marching/ordering them around like Nazi's -
This has happened to me when I was growing up. I had friends and then we drifted apart as we got older. It's part of life.

This happens to people all the time. The guy I was best friends with in first and second grade, we drifted apart by 4th grade when he went to a different school. I've had many friends when I was a kid that we just drifted apart as we got older and got into different things.

I always felt this group of 4 was subdivided into 2 friendships really. Chris and Gordy had a special close bond, AND Vern and Teddy had a close bond. They were all 4 friends but I always thought it was more like 2 groups of friends interacting Even they way they walk.. Chris and Gordy always walked side by sideand Teddy and Vern walked side by side Vern rarely interacted with Gordy or Chris, nor did Teddy and Gordy, nor Teddy and Chris. I think there was a brief scene with Teddy and Chris interacting but did Gordy and Teddy even have any dialogue with each other???

It would actually be incredibly hard to stay in touch with people you grew up with in the 1980s, when the present day potions of the film are set. If someone moved away and you didn't have an address or phone number, that would be that. And people just come in and out of your life all the time. Some people's lives go in different directions and they outgrow the friends they had in school. I moved countries and the best friends I had back when I lived at home would be like strangers to me now. Usually without some kind of glue to keep them together - in this case school and living in the same town - people will drift apart.

It may well have been Vern and Teddy that dropped Gordy.
Nl aon scilen mar do scilen fin.

Gordy explains that sometimes this happens. "Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant." What was different was that he did stay more in touch with Chris, unlike in the early conversation he had with him where Chris was saying he would be in the shop courses while Gordy would be in the college courses.
Now, when he mentions that he hadn't seen Chris in over a decade, you have to remember that maybe Chris left the town to go to the big city to be a lawyer while Gordy either stayed there or moved to another place. And again, maybe their friendship ended a little later, but it wasn't as fast as with Teddy and Vern.

Maybe the OP thinks they had facebook back then and thus should have always been in touch and stayed bestest friends forever.
Can't stop the signal.

which is shown when
Gordie and Chris are talking about the future with their classes next year
and about his stupid friends not dragging him down with them. While they discuss that
the other two are talking about who would win a fight between Superman and whatever other comic book hero
showing that they're not on the same level.
^^^ This.

Wherever you go, there you are!

There was a kid in my class who I was good friends with in my first year at senior school. The following year he changed classes and we barely saw each other after that.
Also, when I was 13 my parents moved half a mile to a new house. Within 6 months I had a new bunch of friends because I got sick of constantly making my way to them and vice versa. It was only half a mile!!!!
It wasnt me, it was the other three. Hang them!

Happens to all of us.
I moved to TN my ninth grade year at the start of the summer. It was a new housing area and the only kid my age was the opposite of me. He smoked, listened to heavy metal, had long hair (this was mid 80s).
I was into sports, dressed preppy, that kind of stuff.
Still, we didn't know anyone so we hung out all summer.
When school started we were still friends for about a month but then he ended up hanging out with people like him (guys into metal) and I hung out with people like me (and more people like the both of us moved into the hood)
By the time we graduated we pretty much just gave the "head nod" when passing by each other in the hallways, or a quick wave when me and my friends drove by his house and he was with his friends on the porch.

Makes me wonder how old the OP is. There are people that, looking back now, I know that I only hung out with in my childhood because I saw them in school all day, every day. When you've been out of school for a few years and run into them on the street and can't think of anything to say after thirty seconds, you realize that you've got nothing in common with them any more.

They just weren't on the same intellectual or maturity level which is shown when Gordie and Chris are talking about the future with their classes next year and about his stupid friends not dragging him down with them. While they discuss that the other two are talking about who would win a fight between Superman and whatever other comic book hero showing that they're not on the same level. Also at the end of Gordie's story Vern gets hung up on a stupid question and Gordie basically loses patience and answers him as if he was a moron.

I don't rememeber him saying he dropped his friends. I remember it as them seeing less and less of each other as time went by. That happens all the time. The peopleI hung out with in elementary school weren't the same I did in middle school either, I would guess. Don't really remember. And besides, let's say something like that did happen, how do you know teddy and Vern didn't abandon him?
I did sixty in five minutes once

It's sad but that's what happens as you grow up. You start hanging out with different people & you eventually drift apart. But see your point to. It wasn't like they went to a big school or lived in a big city. Gordy knew how/what they were doing as they got older. You'd think he'd @ least keep it touch just to say hi now & then.