I was thinking the other day that this blog is kind of a journal for me. If you come here often, you know I sometimes write about people I encounter. Sure, I never use real names and I change a few facts around so people won’t recognize themselves, but I know who I’m really writing about and it’s a release for me. Writing it down helps me sort things out.
Ray’s on my mind right now. He’s my neighbor here in Covington, Kentucky that I wrote about last November. He lives in apartment #2 right across the hall from me. We became friends early one morning over a cup of coffee.
Ray isn’t his real name and Ray no longer lives in apartment #2.
He bought his first house this spring. He was really excited about it and drove me past it one afternoon—so proud to be a homeowner. I was and still am happy for him.
I offered to help him move, boxed up a few things for him. Before Ray moved into his house, we exchanged phone numbers and promised to stay in touch. There was no doubt in my mind that we would. We haven’t.
I called him a few times and left messages on his voice mail. He’s never returned the calls. I ran into him one afternoon when he was coming out of a hardware store on Madison Avenue. He was in a hurry and barely said hello. Same thing when I saw him in Walgreens.
I don’t get it. Since we’re no longer neighbors we can no longer be friends?
I know how I am. Sooner or later I’m going to run into Ray and I’m going to stop him and ask what’s up. “What’s with this giving me the cold shoulder and acting like I’m nobody?”
Or maybe I’ll just let it go—need to change my ways a little bit here. Yes, I’ll be sad about it for a while but I can get over it and move on. Something I’ve been discovering lately in my old age is I shouldn’t try to repair something when I don’t know how it got broken.
I know have a new neighbor in apartment #2. Maybe I’ll knock on that door and see if whoever is living there would like to have a cup of coffee with me. Maybe I won’t.
(Photo from radicalpossibility.com)