I can't decide if I feel more like a student or some vaguely European unshaven soccer-shirted guy today. I brought my laptop down to my local Starbucks and am writing this post while sipping a venti gingerbread latte with soy, no whip. I wanted to get a white chocolate peppermint mocha, but there was no peppermint syrup in the house. Life is a bitch like that.

A most unusual thing happened to me a day or two before Christmas: via Facebook I received an email from a guy that I went to school with from 1974 to 1977. In January of 1978, my family moved from New Jersey (finally!) to Illinois (about 20 miles east of the Missouri border and St. Louis). Most of my memories of high school are from this second school, O'fallon Twp HS. The few friends that I maintain any contact with are from this school. Prior to that, however, in New Jersey, i spent grades 7, 8, 9, and half of 10 at Northern Burlington County Regional Junior/Senior High School. Good old NBCRJSH! Go Greyhounds!

I remember very little from my time at this school despite the fact that I went there an entire year more than I spent at the school I eventually graduated from. As an Air Force brat, I was accustomed to making new friends and then losing touch with them. When they moved away or when I moved away, there would be feeble attempts at letter writing, but, let's face it, teenagers are usually too involved in the moment to make good correspondents, and I was no exception. I know that I left many friends behind when we moved to Illinois, but I can't remember exchanging many letters at all. The one letter I do clearly recall was from a girl named Nancy that i must have written to about 2 years after leaving New Jersey. Her return letter said that she had become something of a danger to herself with sex and drugs and had chosen to become a nun. That's a letter you don't forget.

Anyway, a few days ago comes this email from a guy named Russell Caldwell who claims that we were good friends at Northern. I say 'claims' only because he clearly remembers me very well, but I have only a whole in my memory where he is concerned. It's quite flustering. he has since described several events and classes that I remember, but for the life of me I can't remember him at all. I do recall his name, but that's it. I had to confess to him that I am extremely embarrassed at the situation.

We have exchanged several emails now, and my philosophy is that if we were friends once before then we can be friends again. I hope he believes the same. So, if you see his name on my facebook page, now you know the connection. Some old friends are the best— some are the newest!

Well, I'm off now to write a physical letter, p-mail. Talk to you again soon.

"True friends stab you in the front."— Oscar Wilde