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July 15, 2004
I Like to Move It Move It
On Friday, a good friend of mine’s father passed away. After learning of this tragedy, I was overwhelmed by a need to reach out to an old network of friends, to find information, to return to Long Island and attend the wake. This act, while motivated by a want to support and be there for a friend, was undeniably selfish—an inherent need to reconnect.
On Saturday and Sunday I dialed the 631/516 exchange more than I have in ten years. This old network of friends—a close knit, wonderful brood formed and maintained throughout my high school years—has since been fractured by the natural course of time and adult lives. In place of present day phone numbers, I called parents, and eventually found the friends I sought.
Six of us came together on Monday night under unfortunate pretense. We stood together in a group and observed, spoke like adults, reminisced, each echoing the same thought that, despite the time passed, we all seemed sixteen to one another. Here was one friend, now married and five months pregnant. Here were our siblings—adults, some married—still very much, through the lens of our hearts, twelve years old.
Our mourning friend, through the tears of his loss, repeated several times: you know, this is a reminder to us all that time can pass so quickly. We cannot let so much time go by without seeing one another. We have to promise one another this.
Deep inside, I am sure each of us knew that time would still pass and, despite primal urges to connect at a level now gone, we would not be true to this pact. Still, standing within that space and time, our collective age of twenty-seven was transcended by the lens of the past. In that room, my friends were sixteen, their siblings twelve.
In fleeting moments, I envisioned leaving with them in an old Mercury Cougar, the tape player blasting bad dance music or Rage Against the Machine, and driving down 347 to Taco Bell, the beach, someone’s backyard. If I had closed my eyes and simply listened to voices, there would be no sense of time...simply agelessness....that inability—or perhaps that lack of need—to think into the future, to what is now the present.
Does some perception freeze with time?
Will I always see them as simply sixteen, Marlboro Reds in their flannel pockets, gigantic stovepipe jeans, fishnet stockings, and Manic Panic hair? Perhaps there is a comfort in this, a steadying, such recognition acting as anchor or an earmark, preserving a small yet critical piece of our past as we navigate further and further through adulthood.
Posted by callalillie at July 15, 2004 10:28 PM | Introspect
the motivation was to get it stuck specifically in my head? or in everyone's? because if it was just for me, i feel special.
oh, lets just think six flags everyone.
Posted by: tien at July 15, 2004 2:13 PM
i felt the same exact way when we were all standing there. i missed us all being forced to stick together in high school so very much. we made a wonderful team of misfits.
Posted by: sean at July 19, 2004 6:02 AM
