Reconnected

 

 

RECONNECTED

by

Anthonystjoseph

 

     Recently, mankind has entered a new era with the advent of the internet, Facebook, and other computer networking sites.  In the past, due to travel and the mutations of people’s lives, most humans rarely met childhood friends from long ago.  In this new era, all one has to do is remember your name and pop it in to Google.  Some of the searches on Google can even give you a phone number of that third grade crush or that fourth grade arch rival.   I myself have looked up friends and foes.  Some people have no use for looking up old acquaintances and say that if they don’t know your contact information now, and you lost touch, there was a reason for it!  I myself believe there was a reason for me knowing you back then and maybe I didn’t get all that ‘reason’ so I will reconnect with you just to make sure I got the right ‘reason’ and ALL of the ‘reason’ I was suppose to GET!

     I do have to add that I do know and am very aware that some folks, in order to protect one’s self, should never get a ‘reconnection certificate’ because it was very healthy and intelligent to ‘disconnect’ them in the first place.   Everyone in my family will tell you that I am Quick-Draw-McGraw when it comes time to DIS-CONNECT some drama from my life!  I will drop you quicker than a bowl of hot molten lava if I detect that you are not a true friend and don’t have my best interest at heart. 

     I have received several gifts from looking back into my mental phone book and using this new friendship time machine called the internet.  One of the best gifts is seeing the overall caliber of friends that I chose back then when I was a child and pondering what that meant to me and about me as a person.  I found that every single one of my close childhood friends has become very close to God or some sort of strong spirituality has manifested itself in them.  All of my old friends seem to not be able to get enough of this God thing.  Even my drinking friends from the club or the ones I use to ditch second hour lunch with in high school and play handball with seem to be extremely close to God now.  I eventually found myself in what one would call a spiritual college and realized that all my friends and foes throughout my life where nothing but wonderful teachers who helped me on the spiritual path that God had placed me. 

     Often in the past I have looked back on my life and thought of those who have unknowingly assisted me in becoming the creature I am today and wondered what were they doing with their lives now and what has become of them.  The internet has allowed me to reconnect with several of these childhood friends and it has been a rollercoaster of ‘oh yeah’s.  It can be a wonderful feeling to reconnect with an old friend and find out how their story has and is playing out. 

     The only down side to this whole ‘reconnection’ thing is when the old friend leaves you wishing you hadn’t ‘reconnected’ at ALL!  One bad ‘reconnection’ I recently had I can’t even blame on the internet.  Last year I found an old letter from one of my friends in the Army who was loads of fun.  During our Christmas vacation in the Army some twenty or th*rty years ago I even went and spent time with her and her family and had a great time.  I decided to ‘reconnect’ with her and sent her a Christmas Card.  That was a mistake.  After making contact with her I wished I had chosen to remember her as she use to be.  She has now become a silly, loud talking, drunk, who makes poor choices that she sprinkles with cocaine.  The last time I spoke to her she was regretting her decision to continuously snort cocaine the night before she started her new job that we both prayed she would get to save her house from foreclosure.  Oh, she got fired.  She still had God though.

     This is where the reconnection process loses its appeal and luster.  I had another friend from my early childhood in Minnesota contact me last year who had me running for the hills and putting her number under the DO NOT ANSWER listing in my telephone.  I have three versions of DO NOT ANSWER in my telephone!  One for friends, one for family, and one for telemarketers!

     This particular friend in Minnesota was an older girl who found me attractive and decided to groom me for future swallow and chose to adorn me with money and gifts at a very young age.  She kept me and my younger cousin happy with Red Licorice and Slurpees.  We were cheap concubines and she was just a young Popsicle pimp anyway, so it was a good match.  I had moved to Arizona but my cousin told me later that as soon as he sprouted pubic hair she jumped him and took his flower!

     Now I had known for at least twenty years now that this young female Popsicle pimp had become a prostitute with a crack habit but I also knew that she had had a child and many years had passed.  I must admit that I find it hard to believe that some people don’t LEARN their lessons no matter how much time has passed and no matter how much in intensity the lessons increase themselves.  My old female Popsicle pimp is one of those that DOES NOT LEARN.  Due to crack, this woman has had two strokes, one aneurism, lost all the toes on her left foot, and her right eyelid no longer WORKS!  BUT SHE STILL DOES CRACK!

     The cold hard fact is that this particular ‘reconnection’ with her provides too much pain and sadness for me to maintain the line.  I have enough sadness on my own plate to deal with so if you’re bringing a Thanksgiving Dinner full of Unnecessary Sadness, I’ll claim anorexia and BOUNCE ON YOUR FEAST!  The good news is that I’m only sad because I care…  I care too much to join you in discussion of your self-destruction.  It really was physically painful for me to listen to this friend from the past laugh and destroy her life at the same time.  All I could think about was her telling me how her eye didn’t open anymore because they had to go in through the eye socket with the scope…  She told me in the old days they would have to remove the scalp with the top of the skull but now they go through the eye socket to relieve pressure on the brain.  This process can commonly cause the eyelid to no longer work.  With all this she had to go make a ‘run’.  This story was provoked by her calling me, from a different number, and saying into the phone after I answered, “Are you mobile?  I’m on the Midway.”  She had called the WRONG Tony in her new phone.  She has done that in the recent past and I have realized that this OTHER Tony in her phone is her ‘lets-get-it-and-smoke-it’ friend.

MANY ARE CALLED, FEW ARE CHOSEN!

by

Anthonystjoseph

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