schweblog

Everyone has them. Those friends and acquaintances from your youth that went on in their adult lives to do something completely eccentric or silly. You know…that macho jock that later got involved in hardcore gay porn. The Bible-toting Christian gal that dropped her religion in college and now spends her day writing angry feminist literature and making artwork out of her menstrual fluid. The popular cheerleader that is now stripping down on Central on 6th in that seedy little joint, barely scraping by enough to feed her crack addiction. Everyone has them.

Except me. That’s right, dammit. For the life of me, all of my high school acquaintances have gone on to lead healthy, relatively normal lives. The craziest tale is about a guy who used to be my very close friend. After getting involved with a stone-cold fox and then dropping her like a bad habit when the temptation proved too much, he got involved with a hardcore Christian group in college and spent the summer before last going to Utah to convert Mormons to Christianity. Last I heard he was headed off to Ireland to open up a Christian church.

Now that’s kooky, but it’s not particularly story-able. If I’m sitting around with a new group of friends and we’re sharing wild stories of people we used to know over a few beers, I’ve got nothing. Sure, there’s the wholly unfounded tale of the young lass who dropped her Mormon boyfriend shortly before getting married and came back to college only to get involved in some hardcore bondage with frat boys or something, but it’s all just a rumor. The pictures remain largely unseen. There is nothing verifiable, no URLs to send off to your doubtful friends after the wild night of storytelling is over.

Will it get better with age? Do I just need to work on associating myself with people with the potential of pursuing strange and exotic lifestyles 10 years from now? Any particular signs I should look for?