In 1982, five teenagers took a seemingly insignificant photo that became a longstanding tradition about true friendship.

Everything began near a Copco Lake in California, and now every five years for the past 30 years, John Wardlaw, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney, John Molony and John Dickson have been meeting at the same place, sitting on the same bench and taking the same photo. They call it the “Five Year Photo” and invite us to watch them “lose hair and gain forehead, gain and lose and gain and lose weight.”

The five friends plan on doing this for the rest of their lives up until there’s one guy just sitting in the same pose. “Even then, maybe someone will take a picture of an empty bench for us,” said Dickson in the interview for CNN.

The friends say that without this photo, there’s no way they’d be together.

Website: copcolake.com | via: cnn & laughingsquid

1982

“In 1982 we took this rather odd photo. At the time we had not idea that 30 years later we would be reproducing it every five years.”

Contents of jar: One cockroach (live), One photo of Robert Young (to keep the roach company) and one butterscotch candy (roach food).

1987

“When we realized the same five guys were going to be at Copco together again we decided to take the same photo for the second time”

1992

“In 1992 the weather was cloudy and cold soshirts were worn on the three John’s for the first time.”

1997

“At this point we had strayed a bit from the original photo, something we would start to correct in future photos.”

2002

“This was the year we got back to truly duplicating the original though John M. forgot his sunglasses and we made a joke with the huge jar.”

2007

“On this occasion we returned to a duplicate of the original jar (No Roach) and standardized a hat for all future photos.”

2012

“On this occasion we even tracked down the original duplicate of the Robert Young photo to place in the jar. Sadly you can’t make out his face.”

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