"There's an awful lot we miss"

Usually my job is pretty entertaining. Karl, my editor, and I like to make fun of the pictures of babies, weddings, and other randoms people send in to be published in the paper ("I wonder if she realizes she birthed a potato?" "Oh, I see Ichabod Crane there secured himself a lovely bride."). However, reporting in this town has been getting me down lately. I get pretty sick of trying to organize the messy sphere of human affairs in print. Sure, I meet a lot of interesting people and nutters (like the woman who believes she is periodically impregnated by the Council of Twelve, a group of otherworldly beings who use her body to produce the Children of the Violet Ray of Wisdom. No joke). But lately I've been trudging through the banal: school board meetings, kiddie fishing tournaments, town council votes. This weekend I had to go to the local production of "Oliver!" the musical. As much as I love watching kids dressed as scrappy Dickensian orphans sing and dance and celebrate child abuse and poverty in Victorian London, I really wasn't feeling it. Plus an old man yelled at me for taking pictures: "You knock it off and get out right now!" I was so furious and humiliated it made me cry.


That being said, I wasn't thrilled that I was slated to write a quick piece about the local worm farm this week. Oh my god. Worm farm. I was positive I was going to be murdered and turned into mulch. I imagined some horrible, eyeless, hook-mouthed monster rearing out of the soil and crashing down on me while the fanged farmer cackled in the background. Luckily, our local worm farmer — Jody, I believe, is her name — called and cancelled our appointment Monday morning. She told me the influx of tourists fishing over the Fourth of July weekend had completely wiped out her stock. I was off the hook (oooh, bad pun!). So instead, Karl sent me to interview an old man who had called the office and told us he had just met up with a childhood friend he had not seen or talked to since 1943. "Go write something to tug on the withered old heartstrings of this community," Karl told me.

So, I met the old friends, Jim and Glenn, at Jim's home, where they were sitting on the couch talking when I knocked on the door. Jim wore the hugest plastic-framed glasses I've ever seen — you know, the type that would look totally hip on someone in The Downer, but on an old guy, just look necessary and utilitarian. They introduced me to their wives, Elizabeth and Fern, respectively, and offered me a seat. Before I could even start asking them questions, they wanted to know everything about me. Jim and Glenn grew up together in small town Illinois, so they were absolutely fascinated by my Irish and Russian origins in Chicago (I left out the part about my grandmother losing her thumb in a factory when she was eight years old; I guess "Oliver!" was still too fresh in my mind.) They acted like the fact that I was born in Arizona and grew up in The Valley was a great achievement on my part (old people love Phoenix). When I told them I'd studied creative writing and French in school, Elizabeth wistfully murmured, "Oooh my, French," to herself.

I finally got them to start talking about themselves, and ended up listening for two hours. Glenn and Jim used to double-date with a pair of twins (haaaawt, right?), before Jim graduated and moved to Springfield and Glenn dropped out to work on his mother's farm. That was the last time they saw each other before their reunion Sunday. Glenn and Fern just happen to go to church in Illinois with Magel, "the gal Jim used to go with," and out of the blue, she asked Glenn if he'd talked to Jim. This prompted Glenn to look Jim up and contact him. They told me all sorts of sad stories and funny stories, a few of which I put in my article. When I asked Glenn how he and Fern met, he couldn't remember, until Fern said, "Well, you used to come watch me roller skate, then one day you asked me for a date." This, of course, melted my cold and surly heart, as I imagined a young Fern with curled hair and lipstick, red polka-dot dress swishing in time with the movement of her skates, and Glenn nervously folding and refolding his handkerchief as he gathered his courage to ask Fern for a date.

I really like talking to old people (when they're not yelling at me in musical productions, that is). But the entire time Glenn and Jim were talking, the only thing I could think about was how easily the people we love and care about slip away from us. Even today, with cell phones, email, facebook — blogs — it's so easy for people to disappear. When someone's been out of your life for long enough, it can feel like they're dead. Sometimes, if you really never speak to them again, they might as well be. And people we've only just met can leave as quickly as they came into our lives. It made me think about the friends, and others, I once loved who I haven't spoken to in years. I don't even know where some of them are. Reilly? Casey? Scarlett? Ron? They could be anywhere. Or the people I barely get to see or speak to because they're across the state, or the country, or the world. Or the people whose location I know, whose phone number I know, but I still can't talk to them, or see them. How do we make it so easy to lose track of each other? There are so many people on the peripheral I've lost, and quite a few on the center stage I've lost and miss, too, and I don't want 65 years to pass before I find them again. Because I might look cute and ironic in giant glasses now, but when I'm 88 years old, I'm sure I'll just look utilitarian, too.

When I asked Jim and Glenn what one talks about after 65 years of no contact, Glenn said, "Oh lord, everything." And Jim said, "You wouldn't believe it, we haven't stopped talking...except to go bed. There's an awful lot we miss."