Then and Now – Old Friends From (Not So) Far Away

These kids twelve years ago.

Here they are about a week ago:

In the first picture, we were at Macri’s, a little deli and bakery across the street from The East Race in South Bend, Indiana. I always got an order of jalepeno poppers and a California wrap which I’m sure people from California would say, “This is NOT anything ANY Californian would ever eat,” and then begin to discuss the ridiculousness of Midwesterners but I thought it was pretty delicious.

The four of us were headed to a Chili Cookoff after dinner. There were supposed to be bands playing, I think.  Maybe Umphrey’s McGee? I don’t remember, but it took place in the spot where the St. Joseph River diverges into different paths: it could travel the route of the fish ladder where the salmon run upstream to spawn, it could turn into the raging East Race, the kayaking course people from all over (probably Californians, too) come to ride, or it could continue on as a river, towards Notre Dame and Michigan. Jesse and I lived a block away from this point and I could stand there and think about those different routes the water became every day. It’s a nice stretch of water, is all I’m saying.

Tim and Angela were teaching in the school where we first met. Tim was an art teacher and Angela was the second grade teacher. I’d left two years before. Why I left is a story I don’t think is worth getting into, but at the time the first picture was taken, I’d quit teaching and decided I wanted to take up writing and work at a scrapbook store.  Turned out I didn’t have the discipline to sit down and write (I seemed to like to talk about writing a lot back then, though), and it also turned out that I am the worst possible person you could hire to work at any store dealing with customers.  I came to learn that I don’t like to help people.  At all.

So Tim and Angela asked me how it was all going now that I stopped teaching and I said I hated working at the scrapbook store (I was too ashamed to say I was too undisciplined to write).  They said, “So quit.”  I remember looking at Jesse and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Seriously. Why are you doing this? This is not you.” So about a week later I quit.

There is a lot more to the story but the point is it’s nice to know Tim and Angela in my twenties, in my thirties, and in a few months I’ll be able to say it’ll be nice to know them in my forties, too.  The four of us have been there to encourage (push?), laugh, and listen to each other when we were standing at different routes figuring out what it is we might become.