SQUARING OFF THE MEMORIES

A few weeks ago while in Cape May, my cell phone rang, and on the other end was one of my favorite long-distance people.

“Hello, Joe thought you’d get away with not talking to me for long?”

I immediately recognize the voice; it is my good buddy from the South, Barry Squillace! After a few pleasantries (actual trade off of insults about each other’s manhood, intelligence and family tree) he got down to business. I look at my watch and am running late for a breakfast date.

“Joe, I finally got out the old year book from high school, and I want to square in my mind who is alive and who isn’t. Do you have a minute?”

I promised to call him back in a few days and did so. After the initial insults and self-congratulatory statements, we went over the listing of people, alphabetically in our graduating class. One by one we made comments of who was where in life and what they were doing.

“Well Joe, what I’ll do is put an ‘X’ if they died, a checkmark if they are alive…”

“And a ‘?’ if we don’t know.’

“Ah, great minds think alike!”

And so we went through the list, one by one, with commentary, bemoaning some, astonished over others, totally whacked out by others. After an hour and a half…

“So Joe, all we have to do now is figure out who the sluts were. By the way, I’ so happy that you are older than me. You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

“WELL WHAT COMES TO MIND, BIG BROTHER, MENTOR?”

“No, just a warm fuzzy feeling that you are older.”

I’m thinking of creating an enemy’s list.