northsider

Consolidating My Political Power

A curious thing has occurred over the last few days. After about two years of relentless isolation, I've started renewing contact with some friends I haven't heard from or talked to in years. The four-year-old son of a good friend has a habit of getting Dad's cellphone and hitting speeddial. He left a charming message on my answering machine over the weekend so I sent T.G. (the father) an email and as luck would have it he's in town on business later this month -- haven't seen him in about five years.

Yesterday, a girl who I was very close friends with but who has since moved away sent me an email to get me to start using Myspace. We traded messages and caught up a bunch.

And just now, as I was walking out of the grocery store I saw a girl I knew from a bar I worked at from 1998 to 2000. I haven't seen her since before 9-11. We talked for like fifteen minutes and she told me about a lot of the people I haven't been in touch with for ages. That actually was kind of sad 'cause she had bad news about a few of them, but it was weirdly comforting to get plugged back into what's happened to everybody.

I'm a believer in trends; when I see small indicators of change, I start to wonder if it's just an isolated incident or an auger of things to come. I've been wrong before, but for some reason I seem to feel as though I'm about to enter a more socially-involved period of my life. Frankly, anything would be more socially active than everything that's been going on for the last few years. But this time I feel as though I want to be more active about getting back in touch with old contacts, a big thing for a historically asocial person like myself. I've got a feeling that I'm going to be renewing a lot of acquintances. So I'm eager to see that come to pass. But mark my words, those of you who have been keeping up with what I write here, you guys are now in on the ground floor. You won't be forgotten 'cause, after all, you guys knew me when.