Got a call yesterday from a H1gh Sch0ol (and Junior H1gh, except we didn't have a seperate school for that) friend whom I hadn't heard from in, oh, about 15 years. I don't really have any idea why he called, except that he seemed to be moved by some impulse to reconnect with some of his old friends, perhaps because he's lonely. He's just gotten divorced for the second time, and is more or less stuck in some state where the corn grows as high as the elephant's eye where he moved to be with his now ex, and has a lot of free time on his hands. It was actually a pretty pleasant conversation, although I'm a bit weirded out that he's a) become a serious M0rmon, and b) his voice now sounds almost exactly like his late father's (maybe without the smoker's rasp). I'm not sure which threw me more. I mean, I guess that being a M0rmon isn't really any worse than being a pothead, which is what he was most of the time I knew him, but what a thing for a nice Jewish boy from Br0okline to come to. He seems to have had a real conversion experience--a conviction that he actually communicated (sans drugs) with G0d, albeit briefly. At least, if he's continuing to have non-church mediated contact with G0d, he spared me the details. Me, if I heard from G0d, I'd rush to have an MRI done, since I'd suspect a micro-stroke or brain tumor. Or at least, I would if the malfunction didn't wipe out my impulse to do so. That's the problem with this brain stuff. No matter how certain you are of X, and how much of your conception of self you base on your belief in X, all it takes is a single microscopic event like a tiny burst blood vessel, and all of a sudden poof, there goes X. And depending on where and how, you might not even miss it. Scary, no
Oh, yeah, he's also apparently gotten really fat (like 65 pounds more than me, even though he's probably two inches shorter, or at least was). He seems to be determined to fix that, though, and apparently has plenty of free time to hit the gym now that he has no social life.
Still, he was recognizably my ole friend Yak, particularly when he was reminiscing about rpgs we had played together in the good old days; it's certainly flattering to hear that despite the fact that he still plays (or played until he moved to wherever he is now), I'm still his favorite GM. And it wsa interesting to hear about what was going on with his sisters; I had briefly almost dated his older sister D, who went on to become a militant seperatist lesbian in college, but is apparently now married with kids to a guy in 3ngland and happy with it.
C'est le vie, or something.