9,131 Yesterdays Ago: Mosaic

Joe Lopez — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:47:02 +0000

One martini in and things are going relatively smoothly – or at least how I expected it would. Mostly there were people there I knew, or rather, that I knew of in school. All in all, it went pretty painlessly until someone utters five fateful words to me:

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

I might have popped her square in the mouth if such random violence wasn’t generally frowned upon. Really? Who did she think she was? Where was she for the last 25 years? Was she there when I was teaching Sunday school? Or when I was DJing in topless clubs? Did she help me through my divorce or congratulate me on becoming a father? Was she around for any of my life since high school?

No.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when the cloud of piss-off had cleared from my brain that I realized she was right. It was a thick, cold mouthful of truth to swallow, but it was one of those things you don’t see standing in the water of your life.

I. Me.

I think I spent most every day of my life since about eighth grad wrapped up in a tight little ball of angst. Twenty five years may have added a lot of experience to me, but it hasn’t changed me all that much. I’m still the same boy who waited for people to come to me, who pulled pigtails to express love, who stood on the outside looking in. It’s only taken me a lifetime to see it… or at least my lifetime up until now?

So, where does that leave me?
That’s a good question.

Where does it leave me? Quite obviously, it leaves me in the same place it has ever left me. It leaves me in the position to either remain the same person or to change. Ideally, the best option is to change. The present is no place to live while schlepping large hunks of past behind you like cinder blocks. Is there pain in my past? Loss? Sure, but that is only a part of the picture, not the background which we render our life now on. The present should be a mosaic of our past: little bits of color taken from here and there to create a constantly evolving picture Maybe it’s time I started really believing that. Maybe it’s time I ditched all those outmoded means of interaction, the canned responses, the fear and stepped out into the now.

It’s only something that probably should have happened 9,131 yesterdays ago.

9,131 Yesterdays Ago

9,131 Yesterdays Ago

Joe Lopez — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:22:23 +0000

It was early Thanksgiving week when I saw my old high school principal staring back at me from my Facebook inbox. He looked a lot like he did when I was in school and certainly better than he does now (being dead is hell on one’s complexion I’m told). Not one to keep Mr. Guzick waiting, I opened the message. Messages from high school alumni groups usually fall into a few set categories: they either want money, information or worst of all, your presence. Quite honestly, I’m more comfortable with just leaving the money on the nightstand for them. Usually, that will keep them quiet for a while until the next time the trees in the student center need to be replaced. Give them information and it becomes quite the slippery slope. It starts off simple, “We just need your email address. Just to keep you in the loop.” Then, they want to mail you something, usually an alumni phone book so you can drunk dial that girl from your freshman algebra class. Oh, but wait! They need your phone number for that book too. By that time, it’s too late: you are the frog in the pot, heedless of the rising temperature – “We’re having a little get together. We’d love to see you.”

No, you wouldn’t. Really.

Everyone I knew from high school that I wanted to keep in touch with, I did. And the people I didn’t stay in constant contact with since May of 1984, then I found them on Facebook, or MySpace or any other handy social networking sites that allows me to interact from a distance. No insincere smiles. No awkward silences. Just safe one-sided revelation, only letting them know what I wanted them to know – kind of like being the federal government. It rendering the need for a reunion redundant. And were I truly the simple man I’ve claimed to be for so many years, I would never darken the doorway of one or ever suffer the indignity of wearing a name tag again. Instead, I am simple AND petty (and a few other adjectives that probably wouldn’t reflect positively on me), so I go, sit near the bar and see how the years have taken their toll on my peers.

They say the camera adds ten pounds. High school reunions add about twenty-five pounds – or in my case, about seventy-five, but I digress.

So, Saturday night comes, it’s around seven o’clockish in the evening and Hector (my best friend of about 27 years) and I are sitting on a patio across the street from where the reunion’s going to happen. Over beers, we briefly wonder if there is really anyone there we want to talk to. We shrugged and then chatted for a bit. Once we were convinced that we were fashionably late, we wandered across the street to the restaurant and upstairs where the gathering was. I immediately gravitated towards the bar, quite certain I would handle things much better safely ensconced behind a very dry Bombay Sapphire martini.