Weekend Plans Post: Living in a Haunted House

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.)