Reconnection, reconnection...

Where does the pol-len go?

Ok, so I felt a little Grease-y when I came up with the headline...

But lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about old friends and family, and after I wrote my Thanksgiving day entry, I wanted to get back in touch with some of those old friends I hadn't heard from in years. So this weekend I managed to find my old friend Rich's number and we talked for about an hour.

I hadn't seen him in about eight years (last time we got together, we were busting crabs with hammers at some on-the-water joint outside of Annapolis) and I hadn't even talked to him in almost five years. It had been entirely too long. We were close friends back in those awkward Stand By Me years, but kind of drifted apart after college. He got himself a serious girlfriend and got married, while I went to Alaska to become a whitewater rafting guide and then rode my motorcycle across the western US, carrying everything I owned in two duffel bags, ending up in Arizona with a beard, a ponytail (what the hell was I thinking?), and a bunch of great stories.

But we had a nice chat, catching up on the news of mutual friends and sharing what we'd been up to for the past several years. The guy is three weeks older than me, and has three kids, the oldest is already nine years old. Damn. I can barely take care of my own self, much less a family--so I tip my hat to him for being a responsible adult! While he's turned into a Ward Cleaver type (and I mean that in a good way), I've become more like Homer Simpson. Alright, maybe not Homer. Probably closer to Barney. (Actually, if you get right down to it, I'm pretty much an Uncle Buck--right down to the piece of shit car). But you get the idea.

Outside of my family, he's the person who's known me the longest, and believe me, it's kind of humbling to admit that somebody out there knows just how dorky you were twenty five years ago. I used to drive a Mazda that you needed to push to get the engine started, while he had to drive an orange Volkswagen bus that the side door fell off of whenever you took a corner too fast. But we had some great times back in the early eighties, and we lived in St Charles before St Charles was cool--just try and buy a house there now!

Anyhow, it was a great conversation and lots of fun to catch up. I just hope we don't wait another five years for the next one.

Mikey