Middle School and High School is kinda like Lord of the Flies. There’s the big culture but there are the little sub-cultures. The authorities do their best to keep it from being a war of all against all, but there’s only but so much that grownups can do. Well, in my little sub-culture, we had the people who did stuff like read Dragonlance books. We loved the video games, played D&D, and none of us listened to the same music. Some of us were in Chess Club (but not all of us), some of us were in math club (but not all of us), but *ALL* of us argued about Raistlin and Caramon and Tasslehoff and Flint and… ah, sigh.
Anyway, we didn’t have MTV in Michigan. Moving out to New York, I FINALLY HAD MY MTV. So the music that I listened to the most in 8th-10th was Whatever MTV Was Playing. Luckily, this was right around the time that both Momentary Lapse of Reason and Delicate Sound of Thunder came out and that was my doorway to Whatever MTV Would Have Been Playing 10 Years Prior. My buddy (let’s call him “Henry”… that’s not his name) listened to Prog. He told me to listen to King Crimson and, goodness, I tried. I tried. Never could pick it up. I also remember that whenever Space Oddity came on the radio, he told me about Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” again.
It’s not that it’s a *BAD* song. It’s just not the Bowie song.
Anyway, I wasn’t a very good friend to Henry. I mean, I was *SOMETIMES*, but Middle School is rough and I scored points on Henry when I shouldn’t have. Teased him beyond the teasing that would be perfectly fair for friends to engage in. I mean, I liked him and he was my best friend and all, but I shouldn’t have teased him as much as I did during the whole friendship thing.
In 1990 I moved away, all the way to Colorado. Computers were very much a thing at that point, but normal people didn’t connect them to the internet for another 5 or 6 years. I was a million miles away and letters died off and… well. I stopped thinking about him and New York. Well, except when Major Tom came on.
Well, earlier this week, I had a dream about Henry. I saw him, hugged him, talked to him… and I apologized. I told him that I wasn’t a good friend and that I was sorry. He accepted my apology and I woke up feeling better momentarily, but quickly realized that I had only briefly experienced a facsimile of apologizing and feeling better. Then the dream faded, as dreams do, and I got out of bed and prepared for the day. On the drive home, the song Major Tom came up on the radio and I remembered Henry, remembered the dream, and then thought “I should apologize to him.”
Well, I found him on Facebook and wrote him a message that more or less recapped the above paragraph, and told him that I was sorry and that he was a good friend and I was a bad one. I apologized for taking so long to apologize. And I apologized if my apology dredged up bad feelings instead of good ones.
And writing this, I remembered that… oh… a month ago? I had a dream about one of my bullies at the high school…
I had a dream last night about a bully from 10th Grade.
She apologized to me and I apologized to her.
We weren't wearing masks and didn't hug or anything but we did do the "elbow to elbow" thing.
Woke up baffled. I was still bothered by that in the back of my head?
— Jaybird (@OG_Jaybird) January 6, 2021
And now I’m wondering if there’s something going on in the back of my head due to the pandemic, if this is something that people do, like, before they die or something (I still haven’t rewatched Quantum Leap! I would have spent more money on luxuries!), or if I’m just settling into the fact that the ghosts in memories still rattle around and, as such, I’m living every day in a haunted house.
With all that said, I’m going to spend this weekend checking facebook every couple of hours to see if he’s logged in and seen what I wrote.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “foldy”. Picture taken by Maribou.)
I wonder if it’s a side effect of isolation.
I have been dreaming regularly about people who died up to five or six years ago. I don’t like it. It opens that grief back up.
I had an old grade-school friend “find” me again to apologize to me for something that happened. I told them I had forgiven them and wrote a fairly long e-mail back. I was thinking maybe the friendship would re-start? But I guess it was just the person wanting to put their conscience at ease by being sure I wasn’t still angry with them (It was a pretty big thing, and in some ways it affected the person I am now for the worse) and they were happy to fish back off our of my life when they heard that. Whatever.
(Maybe I really haven’t 100% forgiven them, I don’t know. As I said, it was a pretty big thing)
I got nothing on my docket again. I don’t even remember January and I’m told my lack of memory of the past few months is a side effect of the “rat cage” I live in now lacking enrichment, and that makes sense, but I don’t know how to GET the right kind of enrichment and stay safe. Eventually my brain will just become smooth and I won’t be bothered by the fact that things are pretty much a giant blur since last March.
And no, watching movies or something doesn’t count, that doesn’t give the right kind of enrichment.Report
I’ve been watching TV shows much more than movies lately. Movies are 2 hrs of random stuff, which feels too much like everything else I do. TV shows take up a lot more time, and keep a narrative going for a good month or so. I don’t watch anything I’ve seen before, and generally stick with any show I start (although I had to break that rule for season 3 of Lie To Me). Likewise, books are better than articles, and a big project better than a series of little ones.Report
I can’t maintain the concentration to read much any more. This may lead to me losing my job eventually.Report
Hrm. So my digging him up implies that I need to rekindle the friendship?
I’m not sure how that would work in the current year. I mean, I’d be delighted if he started hanging out at OT, for example. Maybe we could follow each other on twitter. But he’s there. I’m here.Report
Well, I was hoping for at LEAST one more e-mail back (we are 1000 miles apart) but whatever.Report
Oh, well. I can at least say that I’m going to do *THAT*.
He’ll get sick of me writing him, asking him questions, telling him to visit my blog, telling him to ready my posts about my dead cat, my trips to Qatar, my recipe for spaghetti sauce…Report
JB is the only person on the Spam Callers DNC list.Report
Why can’t we have the featured comment!?Report
This is my favorite comment. It’s funny because it’s true.
(He’s also on the JWs Do Not Visit list. And on the Mormons Do Not Visit list which took more trying but the guy who was bringing the missionaries to him for practice abandoned course when he got good at getting those young men to get excited about the WWE and TOTALLY off-script.)Report
I think you might be right about the isolation.
My best friend from high school and I split a few years back for a really dumb reason (I was angry all the time; he gave me what I decided was a reason to be angry at him). Last year I restarted the tradition of calling each other on our birthdays. It was awkward. Then nothing for a while, and then out of the blue he called me in November and we had a good conversation. Now things are better.
But I don’t know if any of those phone calls would have happened if last year hadn’t been what it was.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgUReport
music tv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lllrpcd8vbkReport
Super Bowl Sunday is on my docket. I think this one shapes up to be a pretty good, high scoring game.
The length of Tom Brady’s career has produced a lot of amazing comparisons. The guy picked just ahead of him had a 7 year NFL career, which is pretty respectable. The nearest retirement is in 2014. The only current HoF member in his draft class is Brian Urlacher, and he was inducted 2 years ago. Brady’s played in the SB 10 years of his 21 in the league. I can’t imagine New England can feel too good about letting him go.Report
Indeed. As the local team isn’t in the game, I’ll follow my usual practice of rooting for the non-coastal team, with coastal used in its normal non-political sense.Report
HE WROTE BACKReport