"Remember When?"

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from one of my friends from college. He told me he was going to be in Macon, Georgia giving a talk at the Holiday Inn and wanted to know if we could get together. I e-mailed back and said I would look forward to it.

This past week my friend, Roddy Gray, and I met up. I had hoped to hear his talk, as Roddy has always been one of the best public speakers I ever knew. But they had moved his speech up an hour so when I got there he had already talked. Still this gave us more time to play "Remember when?"

For an hour and a half we relived some of the days we spent at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina. Roddy was a year behind me but we had gotten to be friends his freshman year and my sophomore one and had stayed friends up through graduate school. Then we went our separate ways and hadn't seen each other since. Still as soon as I got out of my car and walked towards him it was as if we had talked the day before.

Amazingly Roddy still looked the same. Honestly he did. I don't know if I did or not but he did recognize me so there must have been a glimmer of my old self still there. I asked about his family and he told me he is married with two sons. Then I told him I was married with two sons.

Roddy stated he had retired from the State of South Carolina and now earned his living giving motivational speeches. I advised I had retired from the federal government and made my extra money as an entertainment writer and that I also had published three books. So you can see our lives had taken similar turns and travels.

Now it was time to play "whatever happened to...?" Roddy lives in Abbeville, South Carolina which is close to Due West, South Carolina, so he knows about a lot of people through his connection to the college. The first person I asked about, Roddy said, "He died." The second person I asked about Roddy said, "She died." Four of the six people I asked about had died. I stopped asking about any others before I got completely depressed.

We only had a limited amount of time to talk as Roddy had to head back to Abbeville. We promised to keep in touch and hopefully to get together with our wives soon. Whether we will or not is anybody's guess. Still it was great for that day to have a chance to go back in time, and also to catch up on each other.

Friendship is a funny thing. It can lay dormant for years and years. Then it only takes a few moments to revitalize it and bring it rushing back. I like to live in the present with my eye on the future but ever so often it is just fun to look back and see who we were and where we were. Sometimes it is fun to play "Remember when?"

 

 

 

 

 

©2005 Jackie K. Cooper

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