This was really heart-warming, thanks for sharing. I think about the friends I’ve drifted from over the years and wonder whether it’s worth getting in touch with them.
I find it almost always is. Sure, sometimes your goofy old gaming buddy who you maxed out an FFX save with over the course of a whole summer went into the military, got super racist, and wound up getting dishonorably discharged for getting drunk and beating up Japanese people no fewer than three times. . . but usually, you’re reopening a path in your life that you once traveled down because it was meaningful and important and helpful, and you find that all that is still true, even if you are in a different part of your life now.
I had the opportunity to reconnect with a bunch of old friends from the nerd camp I used to attend and work at from about 2000-2011 at one of their weddings this past fall, and it was one of the most exhilarating, life-affirming things I’ve done anytime recently. Yeah, we’re not a bunch of scruffy college students hanging onto youth by teaching kids to play Magic: The Gathering and pranking the shit out of each other every night anymore. . . but they’re still awesome people who make me feel alive in ways I don’t get to very often anymore. . . and it turns out that they’ve become pretty amazing, talented, involved adults who are up to all sorts of awesome, interesting things in the intervening years.
Thanks, I’ll give it some thought!
That’s a strangely specific description, Armando…
Alas, not every rekindling of a friendship goes perfectly.
Had a feeling that was not fiction.
Not sure I mentioned this here at Qt3, but late Oct/early Nov was a bad few weeks for my high school graduating class. Three died just a few weeks apart, two from heart attacks and one from a brain tumor. One of the heart attacks was one of my closest friends growing up, really great guy, super lovable, just one of those people who always made friends with everyone. I don’t think I ever heard one person say anything bad about Doug throughout grade/middle/high school. So that one hit me pretty hard, lots of memories hanging out at school and at home. I mention it because Doug and I hadn’t seen each other in years and kept talking on FB about getting together (his parents still live in the area), but we never made it happen. And now my friend is gone.
I don’t like this getting older stuff, guys. Not at all.
Yeah. I had a very close friend that I lost touch with. Near the end of the friendship he was going through relationships where the new girlfriend would dictate the newest ‘thing.’ First he was into coffee enemas. Then Scientology. Eventually he got married. I was at his wedding. It looked like he would get his shit together.
I got back in touch with him, many years later, through Facebook.
He was a bitter divorced man. He had his son with him. The wife had one or more of the children. The wife was the epitome of evil. A walking cancer. She almost drove him crazy. She was trying to kill the children. Because she wanted to have them vaccinated. Boom goes the proverbial dynamite. We ended up getting into a big fight over the phone. Over the evil vax. Never spoke to him again.
I too recently regained contact with an old friend. He was a great high school friend, was the first person I got drunk with, first person I got stoned with, and was the best man at my first wedding. I sheltered him for a while when he was on the lam for making fake IDs. But we drifted apart, and like Ex-Swoo’s friend he was a private guy. He disappeared from the Earth for nearly 15 years.
He had four brothers and a sister, all weirdly private and un-google-able. But I knew his sister had to have a FB page, so I managed to track her down and IM’d her saying I was trying to get a hold of Andy. No response.
I figured it was me. Guess he just didn’t want to hear from me anymore. Alas.
Then a couple of years later Andy turns up on Facebook! Amazing, really, considering how private he was. We reconnected. He was in LA, and worked for Red Hat as a TAM – in IT, just like me! He even had a major account in the next town over from me that he visited a few times a year! I’m an introvert and over 40, so of course I have no friends in CA. I was really looking forward to rekindling the friendship, thinking about driving down to LA, etc. There was so much about IT and Red Hat I was looking forward to discuss, if nothing else.
Of course, he really lived in Colorado. He was in LA recovering from a “hunting accident.” Seems he dropped his gun (revolver?) while putting it in his safe. It landed on the hammer and shot him in the inside of his elbow. The damage was such that the Denver hospital had to rebuild his elbow with a fuckton of metal. He also contracted MRSA while in the hospital, which was why he was in LA living with his aunt.
We talked off an on, but usually for not very long. The MRSA drugs were rough on him (he was on leave from Red Hat while recovering). After a few weeks of silence I texted him asking if he was still alive out there.
He wasn’t.
Later, his sister Alicia emailed me to ask if I wanted to go to the service in NC.
No, Alicia, and fuck you for blowing me off all those years ago.
These two things would seem to be mutually exclusive, in more ways than one. ;-)
I kinda wondered about that as well. :)
The worst thing is he’d do it while I was there. Not in front of me, thank god. But he’d go into the bathroom for a while and then come out really happy, talking about all of the toxins he got rid of. How good he felt. I’d explain to him that he was full of caffeine that he absorbed through his colon. That he’d essentially drank a pot of coffee with his ass.
Nope, toxins gone! Wanna go for a jog?
Fuck you, can’t you see me sitting here drinking Scotch and watching TV?
Upbeat
Upbeat
Somber
(this is a GW2: PoF meme now, in case you’re wondering)
Yeah, I didn’t see that ending coming.
Sorry to go from profound to mundane, but I went to the post office tonight.
I do love the post office, because I love mailing letters. I send a lot of post cards–during Star Wars season I send a post card a day. Just because I love getting ready for the new episode, and I love sending post cards. I’m still sending them since I didn’t send up to the number I wanted to, because I got sick over New Years. Basically I tell my friends and family to message me an address, and I’ll send them a post card. Certain people care about such things.
Basically I love sending real stuff in the mail. And getting it as well.
I have a friend. She lives probably 25 minutes away from me, but we haven’t seen each other in years. I consider myself somewhat of an introvert, but she beats me at that by a mile. Every year we intend to see each other. Every year we don’t. Her birthday gift to me, then, is to write me a letter and mail it to me, because she knows I love that. My thank you is to mail her a letter.
Since it’s always this time of year, I generally write a letter to her with a bunch of stuff about me and my son and my life to catch up, and because she likes movies I send her my top ten list for the year. I do a podcast on this, but she won’t listen to that. I cannot blame her. The damn thing is more than two hours long. Which a lot of people like, but a lot of people just don’t have the time. So I write out my top ten list for her, along with a paragraph of why I love each movie, and a quote from each movie. And she really likes getting this from me every year. I write all of this by hand, because I love writing letters by hand. I do enough typing as it is.
This year’s letter was eight pages long, so I walked it into the post office because I was worried about width and weight. I was using one of the vintage envelopes my stepfather bought me last year. He got me a bunch of them from a thrift store. He’s a thrift store guy. It’s got a two-cent stamp imprinted on it. It makes an impression on the paper, and it feels really cool when you run your finger over it.
I got to the post office at about fifteen minutes before closing, and there was a huge line. It’s a small office. A small town like office. I love my post office, but it’s a little frustrating. The line crept along, and when 5:00pm came around, Jerry, one of the two workers behind the counter, locked the doors. With us inside.
He chained–with an actual thick chain and padlock!–the doors behind me near the post office boxes. It was creepy and great. And I said out loud, “This is so the set up for a horror movie.” The two dudes in front of me turned to look at me and laughed and nodded. I guess they saw the elevator movie Devil too.
The guy at the counter, the one everybody in the room hated, had five huge canvas bags with little boxes in them. He handed them over one by one. A lot of them had eBay tape on them. He handed them to the woman behind the counter, and she’d scan them and toss them over her shoulder into that cart the post office uses. Every fifth package or so he would say, “You can’t throw this one.” And she would dutifully place it in the bin. And then proceed to throw stuff on top of it. This guy had, and I counted, 95 packages that needed to be scanned. And he needed to hang out and put extra tape on three of them.
At this point you can let rage take over, or you can just choose to smile and be okay with it. I chose the latter this time.
Jerry, the other guy at the counter, would help the other people in line until a few congregated at the locked door. Then he would work his way out from the back area into the customer area and unlock the door to let those people out. Like opening a gate to let a few horses out into the pasture, but not all at once. Then he would futz about with his door key, trying to re-lock the door. This always took three or four tries.
Finally Mr. 95 was done, and Jerry waved him out. Literally waved him out. “Come on,” Jerry said. “Everybody is waiting!” The guy took his time gathering up his canvas bags and made his way out the door. His assistant followed sheepishly.
Jerry then told me, the last person in line, to meet him at his station.
“I’m just not sure of the postage on this,” I said. “It’s thick, and I think it’s more than an ounce.”
“Okay. Yeah. It’s…72 cents.”
Jerry felt the envelope for a second.
“My dad got that for me. It’s an old envelope.”
“I know. It’s pre-stamped for two-cents.” He felt the envelope, running his fingers over the impression of the stamp. He turned to the other woman working next to him. “Hey,” he said. “Feel this. It’s old. It’s pre-stamped.”
She said, “Yeah. Okay.” Not listening to him.
“No. Feel it.”
She heard him and did, and she said, “Oh. Wow.”
Then Jerry took it back and took my dollar bill. He went through the rest of my post cards and letters, and noted all the correct postage I’d already put on them at home, and said, “Good job, sir!”
“Sure. Thanks,” I said, feeling absurdly pleased with myself.
The woman working next to him said to him, “Did you get your retirement package?”
“What do you mean?”
“I got a letter saying they want me to retire. With a package for retirement. Doris got one too.”
Jerry said, “No. I wish I’d have gotten one five years ago.”
She shrugged and looked at me. “I’ll let you out.” Then she moved from behind the counter and unlocked the door.
“Thanks for your patience,” she said, meaning it.
“Thank you for yours,” I said, meaning it too.
-xtien
That was a nice little slice of life story, I liked it.
I was working our email at work today, the stuff that comes into one address and we all can grab. It’s our busy season. Our cruises are out (2nd Star Trek will dock tomorrow) and we still have others primed to go in later this month on through March. So I’m just doing email.
I get one from a guy on our 80s Cruise in March. He’s in a nice cabin, concierge, but he wants a suite. He says he’s a producer and names some shows. One of them is West Wing. West Wing! Tom was on that! So I email him back and tell we haven’t had any suite cancellations, but I know someone who had a recurring role on West Wing. And…that’s where my perhaps less than interesting story ends…because he hasn’t replied yet. Still, kind of fun. If I get a reply, I will end my tale.
Also, I had a customer who may be messing with my head. Guy calls me and says, “Hey Mark, you said I should call back on Wednesday or Thursday this week.”
I talk to so many people I have no idea who this guy is. “Ok?”
“So I have some questions about the cruise.”
“Ok, go ahead and ask.”
“I don’t want to today. I was just wondering if I could call you back tomorrow?”
I mean, wtf? Is this guy messing with me or what?
Now I want to touch the envelope!
Mysterious Deaths!
My uncles passed away last Sunday, as I learned a few hours ago, and were found lying dead in their beds inside a camper shell they’d been living in for about 20 years. They were in their late fifties at death.
We think they just passed away naturally and coincidentally, as crazy as that may sound, but we don’t yet have a coroner’s report. Car was non-operational for many years and there was no evidence of any sort of foul play. Much circumstantial evidence to support a pair of natural deaths. However weird the timing might be.
My brother has been on the scene but ran out of comp time, so I’ll be stepping in tomorrow or so, after I fly down. Never done this before, should be…interesting. First call (after helping my mom) will be visiting the local coroner and attempting a Collumbo move.
Now I think @ChristienMurawski should write a script for a horror movie about a mysterious old envelope with embossed symbols on it and the letter inside that, when read, will result in the death of the reader within 10 days. All the deaths will be postal related somehow, run over by the mail truck, slipped on ice and impaled on a mailbox, chasing after a letter blowing in the wind and falling off a cliff or through thin ice into a freezing pond, really nasty paper cuts, etc… It would be like The Ring, only with mail.
Now I want to make a trailer for that movie using footage from “You’ve Got Mail” and perhaps “Sleepless in Seattle”. With the right cut, I think we could make that work.
Working title: “Chain Mail”
EDIT: And surely enough… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Mail_(film)