On old friends rediscovered

" Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." ~ John Lennon

Friends, forgive me for being away so long. It's been four months since my last confession. Most likely I would not be back here now had I not virtually ran on to a dear friend from S.H. Rider High School. I say "virtually" because we've been visiting one another in emails since I'm here in Texas and she is in South Carolina.

Since I did not ask her permission to use her name, I'll call her "Dee". One critique she had concerning this blog in particular and my writing in general is that I quote too many other writers. Naturally, then, I had to kick start this session with a quote, just to show her I can take a hit and keep on a-typing! Somehow she got the notion I pull these quotes right out of my head as needed. Not the case at all, Dear Readers. I pull 'em out of Google!

Dee and I reconnected because a bunch of us from the old school are getting up a reunion next year (and I'll have more to say about that project later). Through a half dozen or so email exchanges we've been catching up on roads, taken and not taken, in the course of some 43 years since she and I walked off the Memorial Auditorium stage as brand spanking new high school graduates. Seems we have concluded that John Lennon got it right, for the most part.

My life certainly has not followed the course I had envisioned for myself back then. And Dee? Well! Dee is next to the last person I would have tagged back in '67 to become an ordained minister and chaplain! Girls were not getting to go down that road a lot back then, for one thing; and for the other, well, Dee just didn't strike me as the backward-white-collar type. I mean, she wrote the first gossip column to be allowed into our school newspaper, for heaven's sake!

Isn't it funny how a friend seems to drop by just when you need someone to jerk your own head out of yourself? Dee probably won't go along with that. She subscribes to the Shit Happens Philosophy of Life, while I'm still casting about for rhymes and reasons. I look forward to continuing debate with her on that, overwhelming her with my ability to pull up and spit out quotes!