Monday, December 29, 2008

my amigo Alex



Kevin and Winnie from the Wonder Years





















Alex and me June 1987, graduating from college


Me and Denis with most of the Bennington class of 87, May 1987, Alex strangely absent, Burgess skulking around on the right side of the picture with some pretty girls---chicks dig a Bristish accent you know.






















Burgess, the day we broke into Denis room and filled it to the ceiling (October, 1986) with crumpled newspaper. I am not sure Burgess still has a full head of hair....

SOoooo, quite a few reunions today and this year. I wish I had her picture from then or now, but alert readers will recall that my friends (sisters) Wendy and Mary Beth from my school and my neighborhood reconnected in November. We had been pals from about the age of 12 to about the age of 22...(twas somewhat like that TV show The Wonder Years, where I was the cute little boy Kevin and one or the other of them was Winnie, with a sister) then you know, grad school, life, marriage and all that came along and suddenly you talk again after 20 years. Me and the missus visited Wendy, who lives conveniently nearby, last month, and today she calls and comes over and we have a blast and if you can believe it, the conversation picks up where it left off in the 80s and it is a totally sweet time.

Then there's Alex. Denis, Alex, Burgess and I (along with Marcelo, the somewhat deranged nudist, and Scott, the somewhat deranged neo-fascist, and that kid whatisname from Brooklyn who had a knife and was f##king scary) lived in the freshman suite of Leigh House at Bennington College starting in 1983. People here will know Denis, that rogue, who comments daily, as my oldest friend, (other than Wendy and Mary Beth!). Burgess, of course, landed in Japan and later Britain, and YES, thanks to facebook we now hear from Burgess too. WELL, the puzzle piece that has been missing so long, of course, since college graduation in 1987, was Alex (nobody cares about the deranged and the nudists listed above who also lived in our freshman suite). SO, out of the blue I get an email this morning, from, can I say it here? Harvard Medical School. Alex found ME, via this blog. Alex is back, and Alex has a new baby and a beagle. HOW ABOUT THAT, our old gang is together again, sorta......(sure, spread across the globe, but as close as the click of a mouse)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

that freshman year was the best year of my life! we had so much fun.

we predicted alex was going to win the nobel prize in medicine one day. has it happened yet?

btw, that deranged nudist is now a university professor!

Anonymous said...

It figures that the nudist is a professor! ha!

Sounds like you guys had a great time! That's wonderful that you've connected with Alex, too! Harvard, eh??? Hoo Hoo!

Anonymous said...

Facebook must be doing a yearend special. I found a "friend" invite in my email, just a few minutes ago, from my long-lost son...well, since October. And he's in Poughkeepsie (sp?)!


wv:noscisto, sounds like one of those November-write-every-day contests. 2 kenstmet= somekinda magic?

Anonymous said...

LOL

Miss Heather said...

OMG! You look JUST like Kevin from the Wonder Years! AAHH!! It's freaking me out!

Karen said...

I love reuniting! The best!

Jay said...

When I decided to get a myspace page and then a facebook page last year, my biggest fear was being tracked down by people I went to high school with. Turns out they didn't care for me anymore than I did for them, cause only one person did it. LOL

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you've gotten in touch with the non-deranged roomies --what will you do if the deranged ones start looking you up?!

Facebook has been fun, but some of those people from high school...?? I can't remember them at all, or only by name. And then there are other people who I end up chatting with on facebook's version of AIM. Fun stuff.

You did look like Kevin from the Wonder Years.

Gary's third pottery blog said...

why thank you----look at the pic of me and Alex before graduating: can you guess which guy will be a slacker and generally never grow up, and which will go on to get a doctorate AND an MD and one day be a professor at Harvard Medical School?

Anonymous said...

What a hoot to see that old picture of us. Those ties!

Denis, no Nobel prize for me. But I've gotten several promising letters from Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.
Alex

Farmer*swife a/k/a Glass_Half_Full said...

Ah, memory lane! It's odd to think about about a time before the internet... Seriously. When we opened up an encyclopedia for information....

My children might not ever learn the word, encyclopedia, though they totally know the word "google." ;-)