GHOST OF MY RECENT PAST, REVISITED

Even though, as mentioned before, I am not the most sociable person in the world, over the years I have managed to acquire a certain number of friends and good acquaintances. The goodly number of those, fortunately or unfortunately, are not on my social horizon anymore for a number of reasons.

A couple of years ago, another person whom I considered a friend, joined those ranks. I am not going to go into painful details: that is not the point of this story. Let us just say that we parted company on civil terms, even hugged each other, but that was it. No phone calls, e-mails, text messages; not even Rosh Hashana or Birthday cards. Sure, we have seen each other a few times, thanks to mutual acquaintances, but the conversations were always brief and shallow.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago; here I am, going through my OCD routine of checking all my e-mail accounts every few hours. When I got to the one I reserve for family use only, there was one new message from my sister with a very strange subject line: Ann Coulter. I opened it, frantically trying to figure out which of the kids caused my sister's strange mind set, because she has never before supplied me with any headlines of political nature; that is usually my modus operandi. After a quick scan of this unusual missive I realized that my sister did not, after all, smoke any strange substances; all she did was forward a message, which, you guessed it, was from that lost friend. The message contained a Youtube link with a short missive saying that he remembered Barb used to be a die hard fan of that woman and maybe now she will change her mind.

Zhvanetsky had a wonderful expression, which, loosely translated, means: " I dare not say it in harsh words, but there are no words to say it softly". Of all the things he felt compelled to say to me after all this time, all the news we could have shared, this was the only one thing he wanted to make sure I knew? To be perfectly honest, I got really peeved, and when I am peeved I start to dwell on all the not so good stuff about the peever, not just that one particular episode. For whatever reason, he always thought he is more mature, informed, sophisticated, and experienced than yours truly, so he probably decided that I never saw or heard about the stupid incident and decided to enlighten me (not bothering to remember my e-mail address and using a convenient messenger). That was my reasoning; but after a few minutes I lightened up and just chucked the whole thing to the great irony called life in general and human nature in particular.

That evening my sis and I had a short discussion about this and came to the conclusion that the whole thing could be summarized by vernacular expression "peeing in your pants". I asked her to forward him my blog link and was informed that he already had it; case closed (or so I thought).

Fast forward a couple more days; another discussion with my sister in between kids demanding their dues and us trying to swallow dinner. Apparently, next time he saw her, he wanted to know if Barb was informed about the great earthquake. When he, in turn, was informed that not only did Barb know about it hot off the press, but she already left her opinion in her blog, which he could check at his convenience, the response was: "I already checked that blog. Are you sure it is only Barb's, because half the entries do not sound like her at all?" Another "pants" moment, plus, I got genuinely perplexed. What entries did not sound like me? If anything sounds one hundred percent like me, it is this blog.

The wondering went on for couple more days, till my sister run into him again. Again: does Barbie know all the facts? Yes, she does. Check her blog. I checked and I disagree. Fine, leave a comment; her blog allows anonymous comments. Then comes this masterpiece of an argument: I disagree, plus Barbie makes spelling mistakes (at which point my wonderful sis just hung up on him). Oy gevalt! First thing that struck was that he, of all people, knows that I am dyslexic and I can not, for the life of me, proof-read my own work. Plus, I never pretended to be a specialist in English grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Unlike him, who was lucky enough to come here when he was a kid, I came when I was technically a high school graduate. My official education in English language consists of two semesters of ESL with a bunch of Iranian ladies, three semesters of English composition at "Dura" college, and the guilty pleasure of about six hundred romance novels. He knows that, even if he does not remember. Then came the realization of the ultimate irony: he acted exactly as Ann Coulter described! When liberals have no more arguments, they call you stupid. In all fairness to my former friend, he did not call me stupid; he just attacked my English proficiency, which still does not negate the validity of what I have to say, just makes the whole thing even more ironic.

Aside from irony, this thing really made me sad, because, bad times aside, I also remembered all the shared coffee and confidences, all the crazy shots I have of him doing goofy things, him driving us after our Mom's cancer surgery, running errands after our Gran passed away, both of us steaming the pleats on my sister's wedding gown, him saving my foot from a trip to ER, and, most important, introducing us to Bond girls. Aw, well! To paraphrase my former tutors' three year old son, "Life!"