6/17/01 - 11:04 p.m.
So I figure maybe it's time to write something new in here. If for no other reason than to get the old entry off the main page. Not that I'm ashamed of anything I wrote. I meant every word of it, and more than I could express there, but a man (or in this case, me) can only stand to look at the outpourings of his heart for so long before he begins to believe his friends when they tell him he's gone soft.
I have not gone soft. I'm still just as big a bastard as I ever was...Just because I've bared my soul once or twice and admitted that I do, in fact, have a heart (or did, seeing as how it's in Tammy's posession right now....Damn it, Ken, stop getting sappy. You'll turn into one of those people who makes you sick...Actually, you probably already are, but do you have to continue to remind people? Just let everyone know she said yes, and leave it at that. Okay? Okay.)
So I was looking through my senior yearbook today, and I came to a couple of interesting realizations.
#1- I don't miss/remember nearly as many of these people as I would have thought I would. Even people I considered my friends...Most of them were actually not people I'd want to associate with now. And it's odd, cause I'm really not that much different than I was in high school. Everyone I still keep in touch with says so. I've mellowed a bit, and I'm a hell of a lot more confident in myself than I was three years ago, but that's about it.
Granted, there are several exceptions to #1- People like Brian and Barbara will always be important to me. Then there are people I only knew a bit that I would like to get in touch with again. Just the other day, I was at work, and suddenly the name "Nando" jumped into my mind. Nando (Jason Fernando Fresquez) was a senior when I was a freshman. He was on the forensics team, like me. I didn't really know him well, but one night, on the five hour car ride to Portales, New Mexico for the state championships, he and I wound up sitting next to each other. We struck up a conversation, discovered common interests, and suddenly became good buddies. My friend Bryan (and to a small extent, the entire van) was just amazed and intrigued at how quickly the two of us were becoming good friends, and for the most part, other people just sat and listened to us talk and bond for five hours. It was amazing.
Nando graduated less than a month later, and I haven't seen him since. But he was a cool guy, and I'm glad I met him, if only briefly.
Anyway, before I get too sentimental, I realized that day at work that that was the first time I'd thought about Nando since I graduated, if not longer. And suddenly I wondered where he was, and what he was up to. He's someone I wouldn't mind catching up with sometime.
So maybe one in fifty kids I knew in high school fall into the category of either "want to keep in touch with forever" or "Would be worth it to go back to the reunion just to catch up with them"
Out of 500 kids in my graduating class, and a school that usually had over 2000 enrolled, that still amounts to damn few people.
I feel bad, that people can just fall out of my life like that and I don't even notice, even if they seemed important (I'm already seeing it happening with people I went to college with.) But I console myself by telling myself that A) The relationships that really are important, regardless of how they seemed at the time, will survive, and B) If I forget about these people that easily, maybe they forget about me that easily, too (although that last one seems doubtful. I try my damndest to ensure that no one will ever forget who I am.)
Anyway. I also realized that #3, I was one ugly, dorky looking kid in high school. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about that. I think the added confidence thing has a lot to do with this issue.
Okay, I've stopped making sense even to myself now. It seems like I'm rambling and incoherent, so I'm going to quit before I get too far behind.
Ken
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