Maintaining Friendships

My mother is still friends with people she grew up with. I went to college with several people who maintained friendships from their high school and elementary school days. I have one childhood friend that I "keep in touch with" (read: I go out to dinner with him when he comes back to town with his wife and three kids and he has the opportunity to call me and make plans that I don't cancel for whatever reason). I met my wife in high school. But the rest of my friends from those days are gone. In fact, I haven't maintained friendships from elementary shool, middle school, high school, any of the three colleges I attended, my years in New York, over a decade in Michigan, or my previous job that I had only three years ago. What's the secret to finding people who don't suck? Or is it me that sucks? My wife liked when she went to a bigger school because that gave her more choices of people to befriend. She seemed to know pretty early that she didn't fit in with many people, and it took somebody special and unique to be her friend. I never had that revelation in my life. I always felt like my world consisted of the people that I went to school with, played sports with, played in bands with. Those were the people I had to choose from, and if I wasn't friends with them, I was out of luck and had no friends. Which was pretty close to the truth. I don't remember having many friendships outside of those institutions. And many of the people I spent lots of time with in Michigan not only don't talk to me, but have actively said bad things about me. Sometimes people really really suck. I'm just gonna put my wife and mom and step-dad and our two kids in a basket and go someplace that has good shelter and food, and we'll all live there and be fine. Fuck everybody else. They all suck.