old friend

mmm.... the joys of getting an unexpected call at 9:30pm from an old friend. a year after our paths parted, he was off to join the marines, and I was off to college. i hadn't heard from him since that heartbreaking letter he sent me detailing the hell he was going through during boot camp.

this past may, in the midst of sending out thank-you letters for graduation presents, i came upon joe's address, hidden away at the bottom of my box of Monet blank cards. I don't remember what i wrote, but i must have left him my cell number, because just as i was feeling lonely on this, my second friday night in a new city, i got a call from joe!!

he's stationed in california-- 3,000 miles was a small hurdle to jump after a few years of unanswered letters.

(i'm still debating if i prefer telephone calls.... letters are so much more romantic... not in the lovey-dovey sense, just in the old fashioned candle-lit sense. its got an enjoyably slow anticipation-building pace. plus, there's something about seeing someone's thoughts written down... seeing how they cross their T's or dot their smiley faces. plus, you can tuck a letter away in a drawer and refind years later to see that the brown hue to the edge of the pages only adds to its matured value.)

his experience in the past few years has been so different to my own. we share the fact that we're the same age and from the same country, but not too much else.

i'm one of those anti-war, bra-burning, hippie-wannabes, born just one little generation too late. listening to his war stories (literally), I felt like Jenny in Forrest Gump.

but at the same time, we were both crunchy hippies at one time, and that's how we met... in the woods of Maine.

( to be continued...)