I just read Nutty Gnome's post on "Réunion" and thought about old friends, and listened to The Kinks "Lost and Found"...
Sometimes it is like that: you lose sight of each other - then, suddenly, you try to find them again - and when you meet it is as if you just enter a room that you've left a minute ago (though it might have been many years).
Sometimes Life's circumstances develop in such a different way - one gets children, the other tries to build a career, and both don't talk of anything else, and each one thinks "One more mentioning of baby food < - > statistics - and I'll go mad!" And then, like Piglet, both have "very particular morning things" to do or move to another town. Silence for a couple of years.
Then one day you flip through old letters and think: "What might she be doing?" and look into Facebook or Stayfriends - and if you are lucky you find her again.
Often there is a Happy End.
And sometimes not: I laughed very much at IG's comment to Nutty Gnome:
I went on an exchange visit with a toerag named Eric Tossi. I believe I blogged about him once! I'm glad your relationship has lasted. Eric and I failed to connect, although I do wish, with hindsight, I'd beaten him senseless!
Yes, IG - I remember that post :-)
And I remember that I still feel a bit guilty about my pen pal Michel. Of course French - our French teacher had given us the adresses to enhance our French. As I did.
Such a lovely exchange of letters!
Then he announced he wanted to visit me. And sent me a photograph.
I do hope that I have become more mature nowadays, I really do! (I'm sure: skin-deep I have :-).
Because - you guess what happened?
Being a very superficial young lady at that time - one glance at the photo - -
and I remembered that I had something very important to do:
"...a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in the morning, and, if possible between the hours of - What would you say the time was?" "About twelve" (...)
"Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So, really, (...) if you'll excuse me -".
12 comments:
I wonder what Michel is doing now!?
I have just re-connected with some mums I used to swim with 20 years ago!!! Where has the time gone. We used to babysit each other's children while we swam laps. Then when they started school we drifted and I moved to Melbourne.
I am looking forward to catching up on my way back home thanks to Facebook x
Thanks for the mention Britta - and I'm very glad I prompted your lovely post!
Two years before I did the school exchange with Claudine I was given a French penfriend named Yves. When I saw his photo (short hair, buck teeth, wingnut ears!) I refused to write back to him, but my mum insisted that I had to, so I did - you didn't argue with mum when she'd made her mind up!!! We continued to write to each other from that point on.
2 years later, about a week before I went to France, Claudine wrote and told me Yves was in her class at school and I would meet him!!! Sheer panic...needless...he'd transformed into a magnificent hunk of Galic gorgeousness!
We also spent part of the summers at each other's houses - and he and Claudine came to my house together a couple of times.Holiday romances transpired!
He was (and remains) best friends with Gerard and lives in Paris with his family. Sadly, they were away at Easter or I would have met up with him again too!
Wonder what happened to Michel.....! :-D
Dear Plaits and Paisley,
that will be an interesting meeting with the mums! When - after a long lapse of time - we had a class reunion, I was stunned that nothing had changed very much: because my five 'best friends' I have met all my life, though we live in different towns - and the others were very much as I remembered them.
Dear Nutty Gnome,
mmmh - after that description that might have been the photo of Michel...maybe the French wanted to test our good hearts and all sent the same photo?? So you are telling me I just had to wait a bit for him turning into a prince? Maybe. My mother interfered more into the other direction - warning me when I had very popular boyfriends that they were no models for husbands :-)
I am curious about that wonderful, fanciful envelope you show us, and hope you'll say something about it. Funny thing, penpals--in a way, we all on our blogs are the internet version of the same thing, don't you think? I've been thinking of about this quite a bit lately, for I am off to Wales shortly (a post to come on that), an e-mail interchange having turned into a live meeting that was wonderful beyond imagining. And then I and mine are off to England, where we'll have a chance to meet up with Friko, and (I'm hoping, anyway), another blog-friend, too! I like the idea of turning the cyber into the real--I only hope I won't turn out to be a terrific disappointment in real life!
Oh, Britta, this was so fun to read! I'm with Susan--the envelope: more please!
My distant cousin in Canada was a pen pal of mine for many years. We lost touch in college, but I reconnected with her about ten years ago and we keep in touch now. I've visited her in Montreal several times, and her daughter, who is of the age when I met my cousin, has stayed with us a while the last four summers. Pretty special. :)
Dear Susan,
I wish you a happy stay in Wales and England!
I love it when the cyber world turns real: met in two years 6 people in Berlin and it was fine. I am utterly sure that you will be no disappointment in real life!
Of course I am not a walking encyclopedia in real life, and on the internet I have the chance to chose photos without 'bad hair days', and speaking English is more difficult than writing - in short: we are real people, being in the real way witty and pretty. As Life!
Dear Jayne,
the story of the envelope is less romantic as one might think :-)
The charme of pen pals is that a letter (or a mail) is often more condensed than a normal conversation. One has time to follow an idea as long as one likes, and the other person often tells more about feelings than actions.
Doing counselling I discovered that an exchange of e-mails and telephone calls often brings the case foreward - at the telephone people talk astonishingly open (well, we can hear that in every underground from the cellphone-users :-)
Britta, you are like a bit of something sparkly, but with weight. Like a neutron sequin.
Dear Suze,
first time in my life that I am compared with a 'neutron sequin'. Husband: "Sounds very good and impressing!" So it does - thank you!
Maybe you will meet Michel, and he will become a wonderful pal to you now. I think penpals who exchange real letters may soon become a part of history. With Facebook, blogging, e-mail, and texting, what would someone think of receiving a long letter in the mail? I, for one, would treasure it. My mom still sends everyone in the family holiday, birthday, and anniversary cards. I doubt very seriously if any of us will keep up the tradition in years to come. You know, I think I will sit down and write some long letters in the next few days. It's been a while...
Dear Walk2write,
no, I don't think I will :-)
Yes: letters are written less and less. I do have a vast collection of letters from school time on - and even nowadays my friends and I exchange written letters - though more seldom. But I met some young people - a poet even! - who have a handwriting like a primary school-pupil - because they so seldom use it!
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