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March 30, 1975. It was Easter Sunday and I was at the little Baptist church I attended back then. I was the church pianist -- had already taken over playing for all the services by that time -- and that morning we did a special instrumental number for the Easter service; me on piano, Jim B. on trombone, and his sister Cathy on trumpet. The song: "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today". I had just turned 14 earlier that month. Jim was 13, and Cathy was 11. I had just met them about six weeks earlier as their family had just begun attending our church at the time... and Jim and I hit it off right away and the three of us spent the entire six weeks practicing that piece, every Sunday afternoon after church, working on getting it just right. Fast forward to 2009: After having lost track of him for many years, I've found Jim in Colorado, and contacted him through MySpace. Now he's a software engineer and motorcycle enthusiast, has a PhD, plays the mandolin, is heavily into Objectivist philosophy (most of them are atheists, aren't they?), is divorced from his Korean wife whom he met while in the service, has a 22-year-old son and a new girlfriend... I was thrilled when he replied back to my email within a day... but after I sent him a second message, in which I inquired about his family and asked him how and when he became an Objectivist, I never heard back from him again (and it's been six weeks now). And now he's changed his MySpace profile to "Private" and apparently deleted his Twitter account. Was that because of me, I wondered...? Is he deliberately avoiding me? Or is it just coincidence? I had so wanted to renew my old friendship with him... but I guess it was not to be. I am pleased, though, that I was able to get a glimpse into his present-day life, however brief, and I suppose I should be content with that. Perhaps it is enough. (His sister Cathy is now in her mid-40s, divorced, and her only daughter, now grown, is getting married soon. She still lives in the Cleveland area, Lorain County now... and has become a registered nurse. And that's about all I know.) ~~~~~~~~~Getting on Facebook and contacting people from my past has been interesting, to say the least. When you don't see or talk to someone for 15 or 20 or 30 years or more, and then suddenly reconnect, it's like you've fast-forwarded through their entire life. I feel somewhat like the legendary Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long, long sleep and observing all the changes, without really knowing how we got from Point A to Point B. This past week I reestablished contact with a cousin, Maralyn, whom I hadn't seen or talked to since a small family reunion get-together I attended back in 1988. She was a young(ish) woman back then, divorced with two boys, and living with a boyfriend. Fast-forward to today, and she's aged quite a bit, is a grandmother now, and has apparently reconciled with her ex-husband and remarried him, from what I can tell. She's also got religion in a big way, and studying the Bible has become one of her main activities. I've found other relatives online as well, people I'd long lost track of. The last time I saw Stacey, my cousin once removed on my dad's side, she was only ten years old (I used to help my grandmother babysit her and her sister). Now she's closing in on 40, and has become a Wiccan. And she has a grown son I've never met nor even heard of until now, Mike, who has apparently relocated to Palermo, Sicily, the land from which my grandmother (his great-great-grandmother) emigrated almost a hundred years ago. Returning to the land of one's forefathers... I've often contemplated doing the same, especially since I found out a few years ago that I'm legally an Italian citizen. I could go on and on with more Rip Van Winkle stories... My cousin Charlie who was a young Marine when I saw him last, now a retired law enforcement officer... Another cousin once removed, my cousin Tom's son Dominic, whom I think I saw once when he was a baby (I'm not even entirely sure), now married with three kids of his own... An old friend, Paula, whose wedding I attended when she was only nineteen, and barely saw her after that, now 50... she had been a bank teller for many years, starting right after high school (I recall asking her advice about how to apply for such a job), but now she's a chartered flight attendant... And someone I never liked very much, Melody, a lesbian who insinuated herself into my life back in the mid-1980s until I discontinued our friendship a few years later after she stayed with me for two weeks, during which she made up the most outrageous lies (said she'd just found out all her family had been bludgeoned to death, which later research on my part proved untrue) and stole money from me... Now she's in her mid-50s, is homeless, a paraplegic, suffers from hepatitis C, and is apparently dying from uterine cancer... Though I feel sorry for what she's going through, I'm not the least bit surprised she ended up that way... the woman was always thoroughly insane, a pathological liar, the most "accident prone" person I have ever met, and always made the most rash, impulsive, reckless decisions without ever thinking anything through, and then wondered why nothing in her life ever worked, and played the victim time and time again... nothing was ever her fault, according to her, it was all about what other people did to her... In a brief moment of weakness I almost considered letting bygones be bygones and befriending her on Facebook, but I thought better of it. She'd probably go so far as to try to move in with me and I'd never get rid of her. Maybe I'm a heartless bastard, but I can see, where she can't, how she brought every single one of her troubles on herself, by never doing things in a rational manner. Some people just don't get it and never will. And the list goes on... I've descended into rambling here, so I guess it's time to stop writing.
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