9:24 a.m. - 2 August 2001
Old friends
We’re all moved, finally. It took us almost the entire month of July, but everything is out of the apartment and in the house. Heck, most of it is even put away, too. We signed all the papers on Tuesday, so the house is really ours. I still walk around in disbelief that we own a house, but I’m getting used to it.
If July was characterized by hauling crap across town, August will be characterized by no free weekends. My parents are coming up this weekend, along with my sister and niece; next weekend one of my good friends from Converse is visiting before she moves very far away; the next weekend is my niece’s baptism in SC; and the weekend after that is the annual picnic for the hospital. That effectively takes care of August. I guess our housewarming will have to be in September.
I was thinking this morning about high school; I don’t know why, really, since I generally try not to think about high school. It occurred to me that the only person that I still keep in touch with from that time in my life is someone whom I met in totally random circumstances.
One of the many activities with which I involved myself in high school was Model United Nations, where our school would send a team to a competition to represent a country (or several countries, in our case). The competition we attended was held at one of the state universities, which was a four hour bus ride away. The university taught Model U.N. as a class, and students from the class were assigned to work with the high school teams.
My senior year, we were lucky enough to be representing the UK, which meant we had an extra member on the team. It also meant that the most experienced students were on this team, what with the Security Counsel representation and all. We got registered and somehow that afternoon, the other members of our team (all female, incidentally) met our college representative before I did. He made a good impression on them, I remember that. There were many comments about how cute he was.
I actually don’t remember being introduced to him. The first thing I really remember is picking the right number to sit at the table during the plenary session (there was only room for three to sit at the table, so two members of the team had to sit in the row behind). The other thing I remember is how well we hit it off.
This was actually a new thing for me – I was not used to being the one picked out of a group. Particularly the group that consisted of my teammates. It still, to this day, amazes me that I was the one that clicked with him. Alas, he had a girlfriend at the time, so nothing really could come of it. But as we were leaving, we hugged and said we’d see each other again. I didn’t really think we would.
Fast forward (eek!) eight years to now. We did see each other again, a handful of times. He even drove to Converse to accompany me to a dance, although we only stayed about ten minutes and then left. It was long enough, though, to get a picture taken. I still have the photo, mostly because it’s the only one I have of him. He’s married now, and a lawyer in DC. Our contact has been limited to e-mail for the past few years, and even then, it’s pretty sporadic. But we do still write occasionally, and I’m always glad to hear from him.
The attention that I got from him is partly responsible for my being with Lee, actually. It was a tremendous boost to my self-esteem, and that gave me the courage to convince Lee that dating a 16-year-old wouldn’t be all bad. It certainly hasn’t been. So, old friend, thank you. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday.
