Scenes From My Life

I was recently commiserating with one of my salon buddies about old friends and past acquaintances who have traveled through our lives at one point or another. With many collective miles under our belts, my friend and I have both had many casual, some close and a few memorable connections over the years.

While some of my friends won’t admit it, I do know a number of them who have acquiesced to ‘Facebook stalking’ and/or perusing ‘Classmates.com’ in hopes of finding old school chums, friends, associates, love interests and other assorted contacts made over the years. I find myself fascinated with the age-old question of ‘whatever happened to…’

Some great philosopher once said that you leave something of yourself with everyone you come into contact with. Granted, you are a different person now than you were back then but if you have ‘history’ with that person even for a brief period of time, the connection can still be there even years later.

The categories where old acquaintances can be found are too numerous to be listed here. It really comes down to meaningful events in your life if for only short periods of time. They’re like brief scenes from the storybook of your life.

photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

One of my biggest regrets is that almost all of those kids I hung around with through my grade school years have long since scattered to the winds of time. It would have been so fascinating to find out how their lives turned out after life growing up in Highland Park.

I didn’t reconnect with any of my Cretin High School classmates until well after our 50th Class reunion. Back in school, I had a small cadre of friends; all of whom were on the college track in school. Then there was me; preordained to go into the trades or the service. A few of us reconnected after the reunion and continue meeting occasionally to this day.

The Army had a profound effect on me although I didn’t realize it at the time. My two-year enlistment was ripe with hundreds of storylines, personal antidotes and character studies. Events happened and were forgotten only to resurface years later when nudged forward by a song, comment or photograph. It was a colorful kaleidoscope of military images buried deep in my memory bank. It was only a ‘moment in time’ but there were enough instances of brain-burn that I still can’t shake them. Over time, some of those images have become characters in my plays, novellas, and novels.

Living in Europe on two separate occasions also supplied me with lasting memories of colorful characters, sad creatures, and intimate cerebral partners for late night salons.

There was my old roommate I called ‘animal,’ who only lived with me briefly but even then, left a memorable impression. Tiny Bailey, another lost soul from Arizona, escaped an alcoholic mother to seek solace in Denmark but ended up leaving for Israel instead. There was the guy from Canada who lived with a local family and was treated like royalty and Maria, my pal at the Danish laundry. There were a few even closer contacts that never went very far. For some that was a good thing. For others, I wish I was still in touch.

KTCA television was still evolving and changing from educational television to public television when I began volunteering there on the crew. I was the oldest among the gang but we had one hell of a time taping television programs and learning the trade.

In the eighties, I went on a film shoot to Costa Rica that lasted almost a month. My fellow travelers and I endured three weeks of heat and humidity and deadly tree-hugging snakes. They were a crazy bunch of writers, photo journalists, and adventurers. Any day now, I expect to see one or more of them on some National Geographic Special.

Where there is history, there are memories. The key here is to glance at the past but not to linger there. I think it’s human nature to want to know about past acquaintances no matter how close or vapid they might have been. They were all, in a way, a reflection of who you were at that point in your life. A point in time that can’t be returned, replaced, or replicated.

But can still hold some poignant memories nevertheless. ‘Happy Trails’ to all of them.