Except for the benefit of the record store I don't do Facebook or any other social networking. It just doesn't interest me and my time is short enough without getting involved in all that nonsense. Yes, I do sometimes find myself wondering what became of certain people from my past, especially old school friends, and I know such as Facebook might help me reconnect with some of them, but I just will not go down that path. I spend way too much time sitting at computers as it is.
But now and again I simply stumble into information explaining the fates of characters from days gone by, which in some ways makes it all the more rewarding. I've learned that a few have become successful businessmen and -women, moved abroad, had kids and all the usual. A couple have passed on and others are exactly as they were, but thirty-five years older. On occasion, however, their lives have been full of drama. I can never forget, for example, discovering what became of my mild mannered, skinny, bespectacled school friend, Peter Glibbery. It's an incredible story, and Peter doesn't appear until the 19th paragraph at the end of that hyperlink, but it's well worth your time.
And then today, on the BBC website, I was sorry to read the tale of Chris O'Neill. Despite a tug-of-war over a girl, with whom he resurrected a relationship last year, he and I were pretty close friends throughout school, and for a few years after until life took us in separate directions. I have two particularly vivid, wildly contrasting memories of Chris: he passed out at a UFO concert we attended together, and he was a fantastic long distance runner. But now it seems his running has come to an end, at least for the next three years. What a fucking idiot.
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