Topic: Nostalgia
While I was in Vegas over Thanksgiving—and did the obligatory drive-bys of the places we lived, the schools and churches we attended, and even malls were we shopped—it occurred to me to drive down one street where I recalled a friend of mine had lived. He was someone I thought about often when we first moved from Vegas into the BFE of northwestern Nevada, but a memory that gradually faded as life stated anew in a small town, utterly divorced from the only life I remembered before that.
Since I got back home, I’ve found myself really wanting to find that friend. I don’t have a single photo of him, can’t really bring up his face in my memory, and even fuzzy on his last name. But, this has become oddly important to me. I think it’s because, on some level, he's a roadmark to a life I didn’t have because my family packed up and moved away to a smaller town and diminished options. I feel like I was a pretty happy kid around the age I had that friend, and when we moved, I lost that and was stuck in a place where I always felt the alien. I’m certain I’m idealizing that past at the cusp of age nine, but, illogical as it is, that almost forgotten childhood friend is someone I really want to find.
In the modern world, no one’s really that lost to you, if you know how to look for them. It took me about 24 hours, but I have what is, I’m fairly certain, his and his parents’ phone numbers. I could know for sure with one phone call... yet, I hesitate. Were we really good friends, or am I misremembering that? What if he doesn’t remember me at all? I couldn't quite remember his last name, and I still can’t quite recall his face. Can I expect him to remember even that much? How awkward would that be, both for him and me? And how do you call someone up after not seeing them for 35 years? “Hello. We used to be friends in the third grade, and the last time I saw you was your birthday party in 1972. What’s new?” Is that putting someone on the spot? Is there a better way to do it? A letter with photos to jog his memory? Or should I just leave it alone...it’s just someone I knew as a kid, now as alien to me as any stranger on the street.
And so I ponder.
