I found an old friend’s web site. Jenny Gagne! I’m pretty sure the name means nothing to most of you, but her site looks interesting and promotional of her artwork. Which reminds me, I need to get a “listen to my music” and “buy my music” link up here some time so people don’t have to dig through months of old blog entries to find the songs that are going to show up on my CD in December.
Anyway, she keeps up with her weblog, I look forward to catching up on her life. We met back at Ridgeview Jr. High School. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly how we met. I think it was just through a class or something. There are some stories that are incredibly vivid because they were so weird (like meeting Jon Brusco on the bus, that was a very odd encounter), but in Jen’s case… darnit, I can’t quite remember. I remember her little brother, Stefan was fun, but incredibly, incredibly brainy. He’s pretty active in developing modules for Neverwinter Nights, a game I used to play more than I do now.
The older I get, the more I need friends who knew me when I was young.
I found an old friend’s web site. Jenny Gagne! I’m pretty sure the name means nothing to most of you, but her site looks interesting and promotional of her artwork. Which reminds me, I need to get a “listen to my music” and “buy my music” link up here some time so people don’t have to dig through months of old blog entries to find the songs that are going to show up on my CD in December.
Anyway, she keeps up with her weblog, I look forward to catching up on her life. We met back at Ridgeview Jr. High School. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly how we met. I think it was just through a class or something. There are some stories that are incredibly vivid because they were so weird (like meeting Jon Brusco on the bus, that was a very odd encounter), but in Jen’s case… darnit, I can’t quite remember. I remember her little brother, Stefan was fun, but incredibly, incredibly brainy. He’s pretty active in developing modules for Neverwinter Nights, a game I used to play more than I do now.
The older I get, the more I need friends who knew me when I was young.
Matt…
I’m gonna kill you if you keep calling me Jennifer. 😉 It’s just “Jenny”. That’s my full name on my birth certificate and everything! That’s the one thing separating me from the hordes of Jennifers in our generation! AAGH!
… ahem. Yes. It was inordinately cool to talk to you again. Sorry I couldn’t hop right back online to keep chatting… Now I have to go exploring your website and blog and such! 😀
-=- Jen
[EDIT: Those responsible for the above-mentioned faux pas have been sacked, and the egregious error corrected. -MPB]
Finding old friends
It is an interesing Phenom, ain’t it.
Of my friends, 50% have been around for more than a decade.. My best friend has been such since I was in sixth grade. Matt and I have been close since I was in 10th grade. Heck, I even met my wife when we were in high school.
New friends are often more interesting.. there is SO much to learn, it is a new discovery period each time. But eventually, that romance dies away and you find yourself reminiscing for the 20th time about a trip to san francisco thirteen years ago.
The friends who have remained have been the ones with whom I had a common interest or way of thinking. Matt and I are both eccentric amateur philosiphizers and musicians with a penchant for extreme personality and moderate views.
I enjoy the dialogue you build over years. Matt and I have been having a religious debate for over a decade and it has gone through many, many changes. Its fun.
So, JENNY, not Jennifer, congrats to you and Matt for gaining back a piece of that lost childhood you were told you could never get back.
All choked up…
See, now you’ve made me all teary-eyed and choked up. Shut up, you! 🙂
Story time: I’m very forgetful. So much so, that people are beginning to think I’m not forgetful, simply because of the coping mechanisms I have in place to handle my forgetfulness. Things like putting my stuff in the same place every night (on my desk, in front of my monitor, that’s the spot for keys, wallet, phone, and Palm Pilot) and setting alarms in my Palm Pilot really help me cope with the fact that otherwise I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on right.
Anyway, I couldn’t find my Pilot the other day. It’s really key to this whole transition thing. I went for two days without it.
I found it in the pocket of a shirt I’d worn a few days earlier and hung back up. Yes, I often do double duty on a shirt before washing it; they last longer and don’t stink too badly since I always wear an undershirt 🙂 Anyway, I had this immense feeling of happiness and gladness that I’d found my shirt; at one time in my life, I’d have called the feeling “gratitude”, but that’s not quite it either. It’s this indefinable feeling of joy to discover something essential that you’ve lost and then found again. The bittersweet memory of the loss mingled with the newfound, overarching happiness at finding once again swirl together into this kind of overwhelming feeling of “wow”.
That’s what it has been like re-discovering my old friends again over the last few months. I’d lost my friend Jenny (erm, I have about two dozen other acquaintances named “Jen” of some form or another from that time period, too, and I was like “Matt #6” in my grade in high school) before I even graduated from High School (different schools and drifted apart, how obnoxious). To find that in the interim she’s transformed from geeky, unsure caterpillar-hood to a confident butterfly of artwork, sanity, and independence is just too cool for words. In some small ways, regaining touch helps me become a more connected and caring human.
The awesome thing is, in this internetworked society, we now have few excuses for losing our precious relationships. Real-time chat ability for almost free helps overcome the principal barrier to friendship: that of distance. It still requires more work, but it’s incredibly “validating” to have an old friend who hasn’t seen you in years tell you that you seem much the same as you have always been. I mean, here we sit, twenty and thirty-somethings, our lives inside-out with all the crap we’ve been through, yet we look back and recognize that our fundamental selves remain unchanged despite the little wrinkles, stretch marks, expanding waistlines, fading eyesight, graying hair, and slowly increasing aches and pains.
I hope I can knock back a six-pack of Mountain Dew with you guys, hanging out on a porch and remeniscing about the “good old days” of weblogs and typing stuff at each other, when we’re eighty!
The more things change….
The older I get, the more I need friends who knew me when I was young… Interesting comment. It seems that i am not as odd as i thought i was by looking back on the memories of past friends and trying to catch up with some of them. It has been strange how many people i find doing the same type of thing.
I have been really bad at keeping in touch with friends. I went through a point where i was in a “self destruction” mode. I thought the world was against me and i was doomed to be un-happy. At this point i was loosing communication with friends & family and making alot of poor judgements. (hind site is always 20/20)… This all wrapped up in the fall of 1995 when i made the decision to change my life and join the military. I entered into Basic in Feb. 1996 and my life made some considerable changes for the better. Friends were not an easy thing to make in the Army. I had a ton of aquaintences. Don’t get me wrong, I would fight shoulder to shoulder with them any day of the week, but that was work. There is a certain bond that joins servicemen together. It is almost like patriotism with a stiff shot of expresso. ( /Ramble off)
The internet is an amazing tool. I can still remember images of Matt and i on my parent 386SX thinking it was the coolest thing. We would dial in to BBS’s. Amazing how far we have come since 1986 / 87.
I remember Jenny as well. We dated for a while around 1987 for a year or so. When she changed schools to an advanced program at Richard Montgomery H.S.. Some how i remember that being the beginning of the end for us. Our schedules were just terribly different at that point, and our lifes were just taking us in different directions. (or at least that is how i remember it… It has been a while… heh)
I have really enjoyed catching up with Matt, and i am trying to work out a schedule to try and make some time to get our 2 families together.
On a side note, i was catching up with karen Garner, a mother of a friend i knew for many many years. She is now one of the technical directors at My old H.S.. In talking with her i have agreed to start volunteering there. I will be starting this week helping the kids (weird to hear me say that) learn technical theatre (what my “degree” is in and my long time passion). We will see how things go. I hope to catch up life with more of you in the future. My AIM name is “The Mighty OZ”. I am on all day long. 🙂
~Moose~ aka Jon Brusco
Pidor
I pidor, pidor and eshyo raz pidor. If zdes’ est’ russkie then proshu mena izvinit’.