Detour

I was all set tonight to write about casually dating or my life as a contestant on the $10,000 pyramid. And then I got onto the internet and started bouncing around clicking on this link and that link -- feeling like I was back aimlessly driving around on the winding two lane country roads of my youth, no street lights, very few street signs, no destination in mind -- and I happened to check in on my high school buddies band, Small Brown Bike.

Which led me a side project, www.dragonstheshow.com

Which led me to their Facebook page

Which led me to familiar names and discovered familiar faces

And now I'm sitting here at my kitchen table in a haze of memory and emotion and I don't know what to do with myself. For 16 years I've only ventured back home a dozen times or so. I would fondly recall people, events, mundane high school days...wondering what those people were up to. Who got married, who had kids, what corners of the Earth they moved to, what careers they wound up in. Kristy B does a really good job of keeping in the loop as much as she can with the big things (weddings, divorce, babies and gossip) but I miss the day to day. I'm envious of them sitting on a bar stool at Dark Horse or the bleachers at a football game on Friday night. I know it sounds unreal but I didn't really consider the possibility that they would be accessible online, easy to find, easy to contact and catch up with. And now I feel like I've been picked up and set down in the middle of a reunion that I didn't RSVP to.

Is it too late? Do I walk into the pep rally 16 years late and try to connect with these friends from my past?

Some Facebookers I know have 1200 "friends." I only had 500 kids in my HIGH SCHOOL. Twelve of them I just found looking at OTHER Facebook pages. Names from the past that would flitter thru my head and I would just give up as though they were lost forever.

Technology has successfully played yet another little prank on me. Fool me once, shame on you...Fool me twice.......maybe it's time I do this. Four years until our 20 year reunion. Maybe there's still hope for me to make some connections.