Transcending the Continuum
Two days ago while I was sitting at my desk at work in the throes of electric despair, my cell phone began vibrating. I picked it up, looked at the number. I didn’t feel like talking and I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it anyway. A calm, casual voice said, "Hi. It’s ____ _____." Fill in the blanks with the first and last name of a girl you don’t know whom I went to elementary school with. She lived a couple blocks from my grandma’s house. We spent a lot of time together between there and her house. I don’t remember how old I was the last time I saw her. Safe to say I was younger than twelve. She said she remembers me from 7th grade; since I don’t remember I’ll go with that. She moved to Washington about that time and I didn't hear of her again until months ago when my mom mentioned having seen her mom.
Anyway, there was no surprise in her voice, like "Hey! What do you know—it’s ___ ____!!!" Just Hi. It’s ____ ____. And then we briefed each other on where we are in life, a little on where we’d been, all as if it were as common as going for groceries. A conversation like this could have been awkward, but we had plenty to say to each other. Her mom had gone into the flower shop where my mom works in Illinois and it came to surface that both their daughters live in New Jersey. So my mom gave her mom my phone number, and she passed it on. This was many months ago my mom alerted me that she might call. Turns out her boyfriend, in a cleaning frenzy, threw away my phone number, and when she called her mom to get it again, she too had thrown it away. The number was retrieved again and at last she called me. I thanked her for the effort. I think a lot of people might not have bothered. Maybe I’m being cynical. But people get busy; people have their current lives and the current in those lives is strong. It takes real effort to connect the distant past with the present. We’re going to meet up the weekend after the one coming. The thought of two distant times converging excites me, for one because it’s like two of my separate selves converging. How strange that is. It’s a similar thing when my friends from different spheres and different times meet; it’s putting in one space the extreme multi-dimensionality of a self and of a space a self lives in. Mad scientists are in the air.
Anyway, there was no surprise in her voice, like "Hey! What do you know—it’s ___ ____!!!" Just Hi. It’s ____ ____. And then we briefed each other on where we are in life, a little on where we’d been, all as if it were as common as going for groceries. A conversation like this could have been awkward, but we had plenty to say to each other. Her mom had gone into the flower shop where my mom works in Illinois and it came to surface that both their daughters live in New Jersey. So my mom gave her mom my phone number, and she passed it on. This was many months ago my mom alerted me that she might call. Turns out her boyfriend, in a cleaning frenzy, threw away my phone number, and when she called her mom to get it again, she too had thrown it away. The number was retrieved again and at last she called me. I thanked her for the effort. I think a lot of people might not have bothered. Maybe I’m being cynical. But people get busy; people have their current lives and the current in those lives is strong. It takes real effort to connect the distant past with the present. We’re going to meet up the weekend after the one coming. The thought of two distant times converging excites me, for one because it’s like two of my separate selves converging. How strange that is. It’s a similar thing when my friends from different spheres and different times meet; it’s putting in one space the extreme multi-dimensionality of a self and of a space a self lives in. Mad scientists are in the air.
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