The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Ever have a dream where a person you haven't seen in 10-20 years makes an appearance and you wake up asking, "WTF?!?" This happened to me recently, where a high school friend of mine I haven't seen in 15 years appeared and I was wondering why. Granted, in the Facebook age, I have to think it's more common today than it was in yesteryear for a friend from 10-20 years ago to make an appearance in a dream. No matter how long ago it was you saw him/her face-to-face, they're seemingly always on your Facebook newsfeed. The last time I saw this person was roughly 15 years ago, so we'll say 2004. I was 23 years old, a year removed from brain surgery, about to earn my bachelor's degree, with a world of possibilities ahead of me. He and I were fairly close between the ages of 17 and 19, but then he kind of disappeared on me. I had never known why. While we lived different lives - me invested in school and him invested in partying - we still managed to have fun...

Well, last night I chatted with someone online for a while. It was a lot of fun. This morning, I received an e-mail from her, which said that she had to focus on other things right now (we likely won't talk again, unfortunately), including getting back together with her ex, but, included this: " Anyway I just wanted to tell you that because you seem genuinely nice and really really worthwhile and I didn't want to leave you wondering what happened to me. Someday I really hope a worthwhile woman realized what a genuine guy you are." So, even though I'm disappointed we probably won't be talking again, that kind of made my day. It's one thing to be complimented on my appearance and quite another for someone to say that I'm "genuine" and "really really worthwhile". Thanks. That puts a big smile on my face going into the weekend.