My subconscious is an idiot. The whole point of repressing memories is because I don't want to think about them. Which means I don't want to dream about them either. But last night my head decided it would be a great idea. At first the dream was one of my more unique ones, so even though I knew I was walking into iffy territory I wanted to see where it was going to go, but soon enough it started getting all self-reflective on me and after a short awhile I had quite enough of it and decided to wake myself up. This was at 3:00 and I was all happy because I knew I still had another 3 hours of sleep left. I quickly fell back to sleep, had some delightful dreams about being James Bond shooting the bad guys and getting the girl (not making that up), and then bright and early I was up and about. The problem was that stupid dream from 3:00 wasn't out of my head and it put me in a funk for the rest of the day, which is now how you are finding me.
But that's not what I want to talk about. I hate hearing about other people's dreams unless I'm in them and I doubt you want to hear about mine. What I want to talk about is what happened to me while I was typing up my post from last Thursday (see Ticklin' the Ivories). While I was typing it up here in my room I happened to look outside and saw a lady jogging around the pond. I was about 80% sure she was a married lady I've seen hanging around the club house, but because she's a bit of a socialite around there I thought she'd be a good person to get to know. So I stopped my typing, ran outside, and started walking in the opposite direction of her. I walked in the opposite direction because the path loops around the lake so sooner or later I was bound to bump into her unless she happened to stop earlier on. And as planned I did pass her by three times. These three times she was with her husband, but they both said Hi, and she said it like she was greeting an old friend. So that was good because now I am a little more familiar to them when I see them around the club house and maybe they'll introduce themselves and I can meet new people.
As I was walking around I saw an old man with a broom knocking off the spiderwebs that had collected around his patio. I decided to stop and talk to him, and started the conversation by complaining to him about how when I do that, 3 floors up no less (spiders shouldn't climb so high), the spider webs are back in a day, so it's like why should I even bother. And then the conversation started.
His name is Joe, and the first thing he wanted to know was my name, age, occupation, duration of my living here, and if I was married. He then called out his wife to meet me because his memory isn't so good anymore and he didn't want to completely forget my name so he had his wife remember it for him. He told me that he has a PhD and 48 patents, but that lately his brains have been failing him, although his memory is still keen. Then he proceeded to tell me that he was born in 1930, in Checkoslovakia, just as the Great Depression was starting to get underway. He was going to school when World War 2 broke out, and his father sent the family to England which he thought was safer, although the father staid back in order to keep working. In England (I think. It was hard to keep all the details straight and understand him) he learned 5 years of German, 4 years of Latin, and 3 years of French. He also picked up Russian, and of course he could speak Slovak. Then after the war he moved to the United States. He said it only took him 3 weeks to learn English, since English is 60% German and 40% Latin. While he was here he entered High School.
In High School, Joe met a girl and they got very close. But after High School she went to South Carolina for college and he to New York for college. She met a guy, they got very friendly, and married. And later Joe met a girl and got married. He had 6 children, although one has died. About 12 years ago or so, he and his wife decided to go visit their old highschools. When he got to his, Joe asked if anyone had seen or heard from Ann, his old High School friend. Conincidentally, one of the workers had. Ann had been there five years earlier and alone, her husband had died. Joe was sad for her, but decided not to contact her because he was now married and didn't think it would be appropriate calling up an old girl friend like that. About a year later, Joe's wife died. They had been married for 48 years. At the time he was flying airplanes, shipping goods from one location to another, but he found that when he would get home in the evening he got lonely. So he decided to call up the High School to see if Ann had left any contact information. She had, and he called her up. They talked for two weeks, and decided to meet up. And very quickly they decided to marry. That was in 2001 and he was about 71, and they're still together today, happy as can be.
And that is Joe. He gave me a little slip of paper with his and his wife's name, address, phone number, and e-mail (it's awesome he uses e-mail) and then asked me for mine. I get the impression he's going to try and hook me up with someone. I asked if he was Catholic because of the Latin and that he was thinking of going to a Catholic college with all guys and he said he very much is. He asked if I am, and seemed to get a kick out the fact that I am.
I haven't heard from him yet, but I'm sure I'll see him around. After we finished talking, I finished my loop around the lake (the joggers had long since stopped) and finished my blog entry for the day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment