It is quiet outside this evening and the air is cool, but has that end of summer richness to it. As I write, my house sleeps and I am alone with my thoughts. Not unpleasant ones, don’t worry.
The thing about social media that is cool and uncool at the same time is it reconnects you to people you wonder about. Mind you sometimes the wondering ends up being “What was I thinking?”, but this evening it ends up “Wow, kind of cool”.
Yes one can say I committed a random act of childhood past.
So recently I wrote about junior high age experiences in a post called now we learn our ABCs. After I wrote that post it got me thinking and wondering where a couple of people had ended up. One of those people was a girl who I was friends with back then named Aleen.
I used to think of her once in a while in my old neighborhood in Haverford because her mother lived in this crazy house sized “pre-war” (as in pre World War II) apartment on the Lancaster Avenue side of my old neighborhood when her parents split.
I thought of her again today when I saw an article in Main Line Times about a burglary on a road called Centennial Road in Penn Valley. That was her street before her parents divorced.
So today I thought what the heck and plugged her name into Facebook and Google….and there she was….after all these years. 35 to be exact.
I sent her a Facebook friend request and a message. And like I expected, she was as cool as the girl I remembered. “What sparked a memory?” she asked. So I told her.
She laughed when she read the post and the description of some of these girls we went to Welsh Valley with. And she shared similar memories. She mentioned our lunch table. I remembered she was the person who taught me how to drink loose tea – she was making her own blends in 8th grade if I recall correctly.
Life took her to Arizona with her dad the summer before 10th grade. That I do remember because I remember running into her somewhere before she left. I also think we tried the pen pal thing too when she first moved. But then life took over and she became for me the occasional memory of a friend I really enjoyed as a young teen. As she said to me this evening, those years, that age, is so hard sometimes. And it is. It is fun, but it is hard. (Which of course if I told my almost 14-year-old stepson he probably wouldn’t believe me.)
I have been fortunate, no blessed in my life to know some really cool people. Aleen was one of them. And now thanks to a few clicks on a keyboard, I have the opportunity to get to know the adult who once was the girl.
She sent me a link to her blog. Called Journey to Badwater . She is an unltramarathoner and an oncology nurse…and an artist. That is one of her paintings below. I swiped it from her painting blog. I hope she doesn’t mind.
Yes I know, I am just one of those people. I keep connected to my favorite teachers who have become dear friends as an adult, and I occasionally look up childhood friends when enough signs point me at them. But I figure, life is short. Why have regrets?
