What’s going on here? Where have I been? Okay. That’s a question that could be asked of my blog on a regular basis. I have lots of ideas. I have another World Cup post, if I can get around to typing it in the next few days. I had a great discussion with a friend of mine about a month or so ago about a hugely popular song that was amazingly not found offensive to the vast majority of Americans. That can sit until another day. I sat in a bar talking with a preacher, a wrestler and a NASA engineer, and there’s no punchline. That was after talking to a couple of interesting women and some guys in the band of a 70s and 80s rock star a couple hours earlier. I may just keep that story to myself, though. I’m sure I’ve also forgotten at least twice that many posts that I intended to write when I got the time. Instead I think I’m going to talk about being found by old friends.
Rediscovering old friends has been a common occurrence since the creation of facebook. Everybody can find everybody else, and it’s made even easier by the massive amounts of information that we all seem to put out there without thinking twice about it. After all, we’re all “friends” on facebook! I’ve noticed something else over the past couple of years though. I’m running into old friends in real life, and strangely it usually happens at the bar. People I knew in high school keep showing up at the bars in town. I’ve run into most of them at karaoke night, since that’s when I’m most likely to go to the bar. – I just can’t seem to miss a chance to perform… unless I’m tired, which is not all that uncommon.
The first person was a friend of mine in the band. I hadn’t realized he was still in town until he belted out a song and another friend recognized him. We’ve caught up, and he still seems the same as he was back in the day. I’ve bumped into a girl I knew from high school, and she’s changed quite a bit. She was the last person I would have expected to see in a bar down the road, but you never know sometimes. I saw another friend who lives almost 200 miles away at another bar in town, when I was talking to the bartender about entertainment acts he was getting to come in to perform. He was in town for a couple of weeks for vacation. Most recently I bumped into a friend, who moved across the country a couple years ago. We lost touch, but she’s back in town now. We were both there to listen to a jazz duo play.
Then there are the friends whom you never actually met, just drift away from and then suddenly rediscover out there. One of those found me over the weekend. We never met face-to-face, but we shared intimate details with each other. This sharing wasn’t exclusive to each other, but it did build a bond, at least on my side. Eventually the dynamic changed as “conversation” became twitter feeds. The style of the relationship changed with it, and I stopped reading what she had to say for awhile. Now, over a year later, she reconnected. I’ve started reading what she has to offer again. I’ve also discovered that although tweets cannot hold my interest or make me keep a connection, sometimes a lot can be said in 140 characters or less. I’m not mentioning you by name right now, but I’m thinking of you, praying for you and sending love your way. I’ve never been through what you’re going through and I refuse to resort to cliche’s, but I hope you find the love and courage to persevere and look back on the good times fondly.
Kentucky Bred 