Do as I Say

Not long ago, someone I’d gone to grade school and high school emailed.  We hadn’t spoken in fifty years, and that he wanted to talk to me was something of a surprise.  We existed in what you would call different social circles.

 

His was defined largely by sports.  He was the best athlete in eighth grade and good enough through high school to play football in the Big Ten; he was even drafted by the World Football League.  Then he had himself a nice professional career out of state.

 

For whatever reason, he’d been thinking a lot about our old neighborhood, which I’d written a book about and he’d read.  The wrong guy wrote the book.  On the phone, my former schoolmate was recalling enough details from second and third grade to put me to shame.  Sometime later, I advised him to go easy on the remembrance of so many things past.  The past will eat you up, if you let it.

 

Talk about do as I say, not as I do.  Today, I open up Facebook (one of the few good uses of which for me is checking on the reincarnation of Bloom County, a sublime comic strip if there ever was), and what do I see but a picture of me with Clare and Michele from four years ago?  If Mr. Zuckerberg has his dates right, this was the weekend that Valpo ran its conference tournament, held in Chicago at the UIC campus, to qualify for the NCAA D-I softball tournament.  Yup, there’s my daughter in her grad assistant attire while she should be in a cap and gown for graduation.  That was four years ago today, too.

 

So, the memories come tumbling down like an avalanche, of the little girl playing baseball; switching to softball; meeting Frank Thomas on her 21^st birthday; and more.  The past will eat you up, if you’re not careful.  And the future can scare you to death, if you let it.

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