Older Versions of People I Knew
I have a lot of time to sit by myself and think here. Since I saw the 12 Monkeys sign last week I’d been thinking about Q, the guy who got me into that movie. Then I remembered that he’d written me about a month ago, so I finally wrote back. We’ve been chatting back and forth, and today I figured out how to get to his website. (Beautiful poetry as always Q, by the way) Anyway, he has a little photo album on there and I decided to look through it to see how life in the Navy was treating him. What I found were pictures of his 25ish year-old self hanging out with older versions of people I used to know. Wasn’t that a trip… Joey, of course looks the same. :-) But the other people in the pictures… I knew them well, but found that I had to think for a second to remember some of there names. I’ve always been bad at names, but these are people I practically grew up with!
I often think about the path I ended up on. I’m not on it alone, of course. Sometimes I can almost see the point at which we girls went one way, and the boys went the other. Those of you who read here probably get that some of the people I link to on the right are my friends in real life who I spend a lot of time with. There are 7 of us and we’ve been friends in varying degrees for a long time, in fact one of them I’ve been friends with since 4th grade. But the fact is, we’re still together. We have lots of common memories: church, camp, youth retreats, trips to Disneyland, swim team, college, and now marriages, kids, careers, higher degrees… When I saw the old ladies in the coffee house on Sunday I saw us girls in 50 years.
But it wasn’t always just us girls. We ran in a pack with our guy counterparts. We dated them. We laughed at their boy jokes. We hid the evidence of burned ukalalies for them. We counted them as our brothers and they took care of us like we were their sisters. They threatened to beat up boys who hurt us. We hated and loved them all through high school and college, and then one day they were gone. We girls went one way, the boys went another. I know from listening to bits of gossip that a lot of them still hang out like we girls do, but I would be surprised if I ever crossed paths with most of them again. We’ve moved too far apart.
But still, a look into Q’s life was pretty cool. Its good to know that while we’ve gone separate paths, they have each other like we girls do. I wish them all kinds of luck, and Q, keep the letters coming!
Panda you couldn’t have said it better. I second all that your wrote. Thanks for putting it into words after all these years. It’s been on my mind a lot in the past few days. I spent all Saturday afternoon going through my tub of photos with my brother’s fiance…it was something special for sure.
Perfectly said, Amanda. Those are thoughts that I have also been having. It’s good to know that everyone has been, at least to some degree, "taken care" of.
Well, you brought tears to my eyes! That was perfectly said. much love to you for that! I think it might be time for a good ol renunion!
"We hid the evidence of burned ukalalies for them" I actually have the tape!
You said it for me too! Bravo!
If I could bring one night of high school back, it would be all of us playing volleyball at church. Joey would roll in driving the neon. Jeremy and Nick would come in the radiator truck. Jason O’neal and the Mesa boys would arrive. We’d all play and laugh and be terrible and then head to someone’s house for swimming and midnight snacks. Such a fun time we shared. I do miss those boys, just not the drama.