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Other Topics => Off Topic Discussion => Topic started by: alandhopewell on March 23, 2016, 02:34:54 PM



Title: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: alandhopewell on March 23, 2016, 02:34:54 PM
      Not signifigant others, but just someone who you'll never forget, no matter how brief the contact.
Forty years ago, I was a young Airman Apprentice, stationed at the Naval Air Station, Memphis. Oftimes, I'd go into Memphis when off duty, and pubcrawl. One of the best partying spots was the Overton Square section of town.

     There was a young lady there who sold pretzels and popcorn from an umbrella cart-occasionally, I'd stop and buy a pretzel or a bag of popcorn from her. I've forgotten her name, but not her, as she was a friendly, fresh-faced girl -next-door type, long brown hair, sparkling eyes, and a laugh flavored with a honeyed Tennesee accent. I loved just talking to her as the people walked past, sometimes stopping to buy a snack from her cart.

     Mid-July of '76, I'd gotten the discharge I'd been being a real snot to get, and I'd be going home in about a week; I decided to go get sozzled down in Overton one last time. After hitting a few bars, I wandered over to the cart, and bought a pretzel from this Southern darling, and we got to talking, as usual.

     I told her about my discharge, and that I wouldn't be around much longer.
She looked at me, and without losing a single watt of her smile said to me,
"I won't, either....I have cancer."

     I don't remember wandering away from the cart, but that was the last I ever saw her.

(http://www.thedeliciouslife.com/wp-content/plugins/hot-linked-image-cacher/upload/photos1.blogger.com/img/98/3385/640/foodies_pretzel.jpg)


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: ER on March 23, 2016, 03:29:32 PM
Not as poignant as yours, Alan, (which is touching!!!) but in the spring of 1994 I was walking home from playing tennis in the park after school, and I took a detour through this new development where I'd never been before, and I happened to see this little girl of maybe five run down her driveway and stand up on a little plastic footstool they had set up at the edge of the yard, and by standing at the top she got her family's mail, and ran back up toward the house with it held against her chest, and this took all of a minute at most, I never passed there or saw her again, though I bet not more than a couple days in the last twenty-two years have gone by without me thinking of that little girl and that day.

A very good topic. And I'm glad you're back.


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: indianasmith on March 23, 2016, 05:05:52 PM
In the year 2000, we got our very first dial-up internet connection, and I immediately started looking for places to talk about artifacts.  I happened upon a now-defunct arrowhead chat room where a lot of collectors hung out.  I enjoyed hanging out there, talking rocks, and spinning "Uncle Indy" stories of my hunting adventures.

One person I met in that small chat room has stayed in touch all these years, and is now one of my very best friends on this whole planet.
(You know who you are!)


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: Trevor on March 24, 2016, 04:53:43 AM
All of you, naturally: my worldwide badmovies family.  :smile:

My teacher here www.tut.ac.za (http://www.tut.ac.za) Jeanette Burger - who passed away in 1990 - was a tremendous influence on me and didn't write me off like all my other "teachers" did: instead, she encouraged me not to listen to naysayers but to listen to people like her who told me that I could do anything.  :thumbup:

My adoptive parents too: my first film mentors and people who kept me on the right path: still do today. Mom phoned me about an hour ago to ask how I am: doing OK, thanks.  :smile:


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: sprite75 on March 27, 2016, 10:54:36 PM
Yeah I had a high school math teacher who really left a mark.  He was such a good guy who actually made math fun.  I stayed in touch with him all through college and the first year afterwards.  I lost touch with him afterwards and one night in December 2003 I found out he had died of cancer.  It affected me almost as much as my Grandma's passing.  His son - who had just been born when I was in that math teacher's class - is now in his early 20s and following in his old man's footsteps, teaching at the same school his father did.


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: claws on March 28, 2016, 04:04:30 AM
Three years before graduation we got a new student who had just moved with her family near our town. Girls in our class were generally very quiet or gave the impression of being shy. In all those years there was no real communication, and even though I knew their names looking back they seemed like strangers. Which is kind of odd considering how many years we spend together in one class room.
Anyway, the new girl shook things up a bit. She was a "modern girl", like, straight out of a teen magazine or something. Our small town was kind of rural / farm land back then which reflected on people's lifestyle. Not saying everyone was wearing rags and drove a tractor to school, though.
She was outspoken but friendly, and definitely not shy. Above that she was also very cute. Because of her some of the girls in our class started to loosen up a bit and come out of their shells, so that wasn't a bad thing either (though at that point I personally didn't care anymore after being on "ignore" for such a long time).
One day during lunch break she came up to me and we talked about I don't remember what. I had already developed this 'secret' crush on her (just like most of the guys in our class) but our conversation didn't turn awkward because she was so easy to talk to.
We became good friends and in our final school year a little more than that (something our teacher noticed and would point out during class on several occasions. Just to embarrass us I guess). Unfortunately her family moved again after graduation. We promised to stay in contact but our long distance friendship faded in less than a year (yep, this was before the Internet).


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: Allhallowsday on April 05, 2016, 10:54:18 PM
My friend MARVIN was funny, gentle, kind, talented and honest.  NEW ERA TOYS was his company.  He's gone a while now.  I love him and am still friends with his widow.  I used to do toy shows with him... hard to believe it's about 30 years since those toy shows...

When I was about 4 or 5 I made a friend with an older boy, climbing a tree (my climbing tree) right next to where my family had lived (now that's even further back in time).  I think his name was Steven, but I only saw him that one day, and never saw him again.  He was really nice to a kid much younger than he must have been (by a whopping 3 or 4 years) and could climb all the way up that tree (it's gone now).  He was a bit of a hero to me.  I felt special making friends with someone so "old".  Though it's been decades, I never forgot that kid.  Kindness always makes a strong impression on me. 


Title: Re: GIRLS(AND GUYS) WHO LEFT A MARK
Post by: ER on April 05, 2016, 11:46:11 PM

Tales of Insomnia!

In high school I knew this boy named Roger Morgan, and he was absolutely and beyond any question the smartest student there. He was so smart he was off the scale and even the AP teachers in our program (one of the best in the region) didn't know how to deal with him. He'd make jokes about being ahead of them on their own course materials, which he was, and used to say he could teach any class in the curriculum. Nobody exactly doubted him.

Well he and I did this science project together junior year. (He did it, I wrote the paperwork based on what he told me to say, and I sort of comprehended it, but just barely.) He was not at all a bad-looking boy but he was mostly an outsider at school, kept to himself, read a lot, not a lot of people talked to him, and he really seemed fine with that, quietly contemptuous even, but he would talk to me, and one day while we were working on the project, he invited me to his house, so I figured why not.

In short I had no idea people like him and his family existed in real life, and I'd never met anybody like them! They were 95% amazing, 5% disturbing as hell.

His mother was awesome, though. She was this flower child earth goddess type who was about six feet tall and weighed two-hundred pounds and wore these flowing hippie dresses and headbands, and she'd give you what she called "energy hugs" and the whole family were these down to earth vegans with IQs too lofty for Mensa, and it was almost like a sitcom at their house, because they grew marijuana, and spoke to each other in Spanish or French or whatever they felt like, they were multi-lingual, and Roger's dad was an honest to goodness inventor, who created useful stuff.

They were all about "karma" and "good deeds to the planet" but were also scientific and philosophical, and Roger was basically allowed to do whatever he wanted at home and had no apparent phobias or hangups or anything because he had always been given free rein all his life, but he was also this amoral genius who (I got the impression from things he said) seemed to think every other human being was beneath him and there to serve his higher will. Still, he never did anything lawless that I knew of. (He also had no friends, ha.) He told me one time, "I've had a woman." First of all, who says something like that, and second, what's the socially-accepted response to that sort of open declaration? I think I said, "That's cool, Roger."

Plus one night around Christmastime in eleventh grade, out of the blue when my boyfriend was in Florida with his sister, right in my front yard, Roger kissed me, and I stood there and didn't kiss him back but I also didn't like back away from it, and it was a good kiss actually. I said, "Uh, don't do that again." He didn't but he did end up taking me to the junior prom that spring on a sort of "hey will you do this for me?" basis because the guy I was going out with was older than the upper limit the school allowed for prom dates. Plus I stepped in dog poop on the way there, getting it all over my two-hundred dollar Nine West shoes: that's my prom horror story.

So Roger left a mark in my memory. Oddest person, part nerd, part world conqueror type. I've lost track of him but he's probably in his secret lair in Greenland now plotting global domination.