A few weeks ago a real great friend from my past e-mailed me. She said she saw her roommate looking at a web site and did a double take at the picture at the top of the page and realized it was me. She said she immediately jumped online and e-mailed me. When I get e-mails from old friends it makes me feel good to know that people actually do remember me.
This friend though was what I considered my best friend at the time and I use to wonder what happened to her when I would go home to see my folks and wondered what she was doing these days. She worked for a competing radio station when I worked for KZ106 and WCLI but when we weren’t working we were inseparable around Corning and Elmira. She and I talked music, about life and just hung out and had fun as platonic friends do. When I changed stations and shifts and then eventually moved out of the Bath/Corning area we had drifted apart and I never got to say goodbye…and I always felt bad about that and it was good to hear from her and know that she is doing well.
This is also the time of year I always get into a retrospective mood and always think about the past and all the people I never see anymore…all my friends from Fallsington that I heard from once or twice right after I was banished to Bath, Rick and Kathleen Chevet, Mike Capriotti. I do see my ex neighbor Kevin Reed once in a blue moon..he told me a kid who use to hang out with Mike, Kathaleen and me died a few years back, which shocked me Jay was a few years younger then me. Then there are the friends from The Hun School that probably don’t even remember me, but who I remember fondly as well as the friends from Newtown Friends School. I do hear from my buddy Bill Magod from NFS every few months or so..but don’t see him much since our schedules never seem to mesh.
I asked a question to a friend of mine at work the other day “if you could back to High School with what you know now and do it all over again would you?” She said she would..she of course asked me the same thing and of course I had some wise-ass answer because I didn’t want to admit I would go back farther then high school. I would go back to that second year of The Hun school and maybe really apply myself….see I was never one for school and back in 7th grade I just didn’t care and my following school years show it.
Even before I asked her the question I had been thinking about the past a lot and wondering how much my life and even me as a person would be different if I had done things differently? Would I have had to move to Bath if I had been doing better in school, would I have gone into radio at all, would I have gotten into computers and system admining? If this were a movie I would now be hit on the head, be knocked out and dream that I was back in 7th grade and see how life would be different.
Now don’t get me wrong I love and am happy with what I have become as a person and what I have done with most of my life, but we all have those few little things we did that we wish we could have done differently or not done at all. I turn 42 this July and I look back and realized that somethings I could have done differently. So as my life moves on it will always be in the back of my mind what if I had really studied for that science test or taken the time to really apply myself in high school instead of just trying to get by (my parents are nodding there heads right now saying “we told you so”) and going to college and getting the ever coveted degree, how would life be different for me and my family.
