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Saturday, March 28, 2020

Birthday 2020 Thoughts


Once again, my friends you have surprise me with your outpouring of well wishes. Every year I unabashedly look forward to this outpouring of friendship because it gives me an excuse to recall those faces and names of friends who have reached out allows me to replay our times together.

There is a  great mix of people that appear on my timeline on Facebook and elsewhere: from my professional life, from my volleyball coaching life, from my Gradual School life, from my undergraduate school life, from my high school life, and even some from  my grade school life. We shall leave the time period unspecified for the protection of the innocent. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your friendship means so much to me, it gives me strength and hope; it also gives me a chance to revisit memories created at another time and another place, when we were all younger, more idealistic, and much more innocent. For some of us of course, it meant that we had more hair that was of our natural colors, while for others it meant that they had more hair.

A friend’s Facebook posts stated that this particular birthday has got to be one of the most memorable birthdays because of the circumstances. I had to think about it and realized that he was correct and incorrect all at the same time. It was memorable because of the circumstances of which we were living. But each marking of our sojourn through space and time is memorable because of friends who care enough in these troubled times to reach out through social media to give us that little ego boosting touch of humanity. It gives us that unexpected spark, that extra burst of life in our daily routine.

My birthday ended in the most 2020 way. I had a Webex meeting with the people that I first met on the campus of University of Illinois, at Allen Hall. We were all freshmen together and we have remained in touch 40 years later. Meeting on Webex was unique, we should all be quite familiar with the environs presented by the virtual meeting, but some were better at the technology than others. We were all able to call in, some of us managed to not lock ourselves out of our laptops.

We raised many toasts, we talked of our lives and things. We all managed to stay awake beyond the dreaded 9 PM snooze attack, even though some of us were struggling; and we spoke as if forty years had not elapsed. Those of the things I will remember forever.

Peace My friends and Be Well

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