On the Night of January 16th
i was in that play years ago. it was one of the first plays i was ever in. i was lawrence-someone-or-other. a gangster. i believe i even wore a pinky ring and talked wit' a friggin' accent. sometimes i think about that play because it was the year that i met some of the first people who i still know and consider friends today. our family moved a lot growing up and i went to many different schools in many different towns. i showed up, met people, became friends with those people, then moved away and kept in touch with those friends for a few months- until we stopped keeping in touch. such was always the way. honestly, thats kinda still my way. i'm not great at keeping in touch. i dont know of i ever have been or ever will be. hell- i hardly keep in touch with my own family. anyway. the year of the show of the name on the night of january 16th was my jr yr in hi schl. i was what, 15 or 16? now i'm 35. i've known some of these people longer than i have not. then i got to college and grad school and dental school and the marine corp and space camp and i still have relations with some of the people from college (or the years post college but pre vegas). perhaps it has less to do with the amount of time i spent with them and more to do with the fact that as i got older i had more reason to develop reasons to maintain relationships over time or perhaps it was the ease that came with the invention of email and livejournal and wwwing and such. now i could simply start a facebook page and make sure that everybody i came into contact with had one too and they were my friend and every time they talked to one of my other friends i would know about it and i could comment on what they said to people who i didnt know i knew but i was at a party with them 19 years ago and there is photographic evidence for all the world to see and everybody at that party could be my friend too. or i could move to town, be in a play with you and eventually sit in your room surrounded by tasty snacks and polyhedral plastic pieces and sooner or later one of us would do something incredibly stupid that somehow worked anyway. and it would be reason enough for me to actually care that we went to a party together oh! so many years ago where you taught me to use Capital Letters.