Going Old School

I'm not always quick to embrace the latest technology. Only about six months ago did I break down and get a cellphone. I do not own an MP3 player although I bought one for my wife. I'm still on dial up. (though that one is not by choice) I really don't like computers, even though I love what they can do. I still struggle with all those terms and their meanings. Bytes, megahertz, rams, roms, sis boom bahs. I don't really care how or why it works as long as it does. Yeah I know I'm supposed to know some of this crap for work and despite my resistance a have learned a few things, but my technological know how really isn't the focus of this post.

So what is? I'm not sure, but follow along cause this could be a long explanation.

I started this blog and created a MySpace page (stop in and join my merry band of friends if you wish) primarily to get my name out there, market myself as well as my writing. I love and have quickly became addicted to the blogosphere -- Myspace I find rather tedious and for the most part way more trouble that it is worth.

But Myspace does have its usefulness. Just this last week I logged on and lo and behold I had a new message -- From my best friend through much of my school years.

Jason moved to my neighborhood when we were in the fourth of fifth grade, I think. Maybe it was third grade. Funny how I can remember somethings with great detail and others not at all.
Anyway up until them it had been me and my friend since kindergarten Mark, who terrorized the street. Then in a short time Jason and a kid named Brian Koontz moved in.

I have always been prone to giving my friends nicknames. I trait I still have. Fiddler are your reading this? Anyway Brian Koonts became Cootie, and Jason, who was going by his step-dads surname of Grubb at the time became Grubworm. Yeah I know Cootie and grubworm aren't the most endearing of monikers but young boys aren't known for being all that endearing.

Cootie moved away shortly thereafter and we never saw him again, mark moved across town which resulted in us growing apart although I will always consider him a friend as well. Last time I saw him was at my tenth high school reunion back in 2001.

So that left me and Grub (the worm got dropped after a while) for a lot of years. I'm sure his name will come up in stories on this blog, quite possibly in future installments of Terrible Tuesdays with Travis. When we hit high school our directions veered a bit, but our worlds expanded with the ability to drive so we didn't see as much of each other but there are lots of things that will always tie me and Jason together, including my writing.

Remember that movie Red Dawn, with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen about a Russian invasion of a small town in Colorado? There is a good chance you don't, but back in the day me and my friends loved that movie along with another one called Cloak and Dagger about a young boy with a military hero as an imaginary friend. We often acted out Cloak and Dagger, but Red Dawn we actually rewrote and that is the first time I actually remember putting pen to paper and creating a story. Even though we stole the plot directly from the movie we changed the setting to Amarillo and the characters to ourselves. Okay, so we were dorks, but we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Anyway after high school Jason joined the Air Force went off to exotic locales like Hawaii and Korea and I enlisted in another government agency the US Postal Service and got to visit other exotic locales like Norman, Oklahoma and Childress, Texas. (More on this town in a future post)

Jason came back once about a year or so after graduation but that is the last time I had seen or heard from him until he found me via myspace this week. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and two kids and is some type of computer guru. Nowadays he goes by his actual name of Jason Adams and if you pop over to his blog today you'll find out he is a traitor to my commune which I shall call Carnivore Cottage. You'll also find out he's not as skinny as he used to be and that his wife just might be smarter than both of us.

In the last week or so me and Jason have exchanged a message or two via myspace, a phone conversation, and he has left a comment or two here on this blog. He has made me remember things I had long since forgotten. I'm sure we are both very different people then we were as childhood friends, but it was very good to reconnect with him and I plan to make every effort to stay in touch. Maybe we'll never crawl around in another huge sewer pipe together, or maybe we will now that we are both legal drinking age, but life is too shy of good friends to let any of them slip away forever.