By Kirk Kern
Social distancing doesn’t necessarily have be anti-social as part of the distancing. For me, it’s been an opportunity to reach out to a long lost friend.
Thanks to the internet, it’s pretty easy to find people you’ve lost touch with without looking creepy while doing so.
A case in point.
Yesterday, I talked with one of my best friends that I hadn’t spoken with in probably 25 years or so. And when I mean best friends, I mean the best man at my wedding.
There was no falling out in our relationship. He moved to a different town and then I moved to Las Vegas, and then Arizona and then back to Vegas.
My friend Theron went off to graduate school in another state and then moved around a bit. He even wrote a book about Texas high school football before settling in as a high school English teacher in northern California.
About a year or so ago, he penned an obituary in my hometown newspaper for our high school English teacher. I shared the post of the obit on my Facebook page and his wife re-shared it. We then connected on Facebook.
Neither one of us is an active Facebook poster (although I am now posting 215Southwest articles on the site). But a couple of weeks ago, I messaged her and asked for Theron’s contact info.
I emailed him and we set up a call. I wasn’t sure how it would go because, obviously, 25 years had passed and people do change over time.
But when the call came, we fell into our style of conversations we had back when we used to talk every day. We had a great time reminiscing about the past and catching up on our lives.
We promised to keep in touch and I’m sure we will.
Everybody has people they were close to that they have just lost touch with through the years. Now, with many of having a fair amount of free time on our hands, is a good time to reach out.
Next up is my old college roommate.