I originally started this blog to post my daily thoughts and interesting things I see or find, then I took a bit of a break from it. So I'm planning to start up again, and stick to it this time.
I've been feeling a bit (a lot) melancholy lately, missing some people from my past. It started when I decided to add a video to my Vevo playlist, but the video I wanted wasn't available, so I searched for it and ended up at Youtube. The video was Trixter's "Give It To Me Good," btw. So I started a playlist, and started adding songs, and found a video for Eric Carmen's old song, "Hey Deanie." Which made me think of a guy I used to know back in junior high, er... middle school. His name was Robert, and he was the "Yard duty supervisor." Sort of a babysitter on the playground at lunchtime. I was a bit of a weird kid, and told him my name was Deanie, because of the song. He was in college and I was in sixth grade, and I was so crazy about him. My friends and I would mostly hang out with him and talk. He knew I liked him, it was rather obvious, but he was always so cool about it. He never made me feel like he didn't want me around. He worked at the school at least partway through my eighth grade year, and he was my friend. Really a friend. Some guys might have taken advantage of the situation, but he never crossed the line. He graduated college, though, and went on with his life.
About eleven years later, my sister and I were shopping at a department store, and my sister asked me, "Isn't that the guy you liked in junior high?" Lo and behold, it was him. We chatted for a few minutes, but his boss was near so he couldn't talk long. We exchanged email addresses, but when I went to contact him, I'd remembered his address wrong and couldn't find him. I never saw or heard from him again. A few years ago, I was walking home from the bus stop and it's vague, but I saw a truck parked at a house, and it had his last name on the truck... some sort of business sign. I asked the man with the truck if he knew Robert, and he said he was his brother. I asked about Robert, and was told he'd moved back east. I asked that he pass on the message that I'd asked about him and the man said he would. As I was walking away, Robert's father asked the man (Robert's brother), "Why'd you tell her that?" I thought that meant he had no intention of telling Robert about it, but didn't think too much about it.
So I added the song to my playlist and thought about Robert and wondered what became him, so I started searching the internet for him. I'm not a member of the pay sites where you find people, so it was difficult to find anything. But I found one thing: A death record. I didn't know for sure if it was him, but then I remembered talking to his brother, and it made sense. He died in 1997, and I had no idea. What started out as this wonderful idea of finding my friend turned into something I never expected, and was horrified to learn. I have no idea what happened to him, he wasn't that old, I can't find anything about it, not even an obituary. I guess it isn't important how, anyway. It just really hit me hard. He was a sweet person, and I will miss him forever.
In my melancholy, I started looking for other people from my past. Another video, another search, and I discovered the lead singer from SouthGang, Jesse Harte, (look them up) has a new band called Bloody Red Hearts, which I think is great. I met him a few times, a really sweet guy. Which led to me searching (for like the dozenth time) for another old friend, Blake, who introduced me to Jesse, and this search actually found him. I sent him a message and hope he'll write back.
So I've had a very up-and-down week as far as old friends go. Let's hope the coming week is on the happier side of things.
Treasure the people you love, and make sure you tell them often how you feel about them. And be good to each other.
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