The past

I find myself recently during my down time, (down time meaning time when I don't have something else on my mind or pressing, not depressed time) revisiting people and places from my past. Just now, I was printing out these reports that don't require any active thought... just click, enter date, click... So while I was doing this, my mind wandered back to... it doesn't matter really what... and I thought, I miss that. Or sometimes it is just a pang of I wonder what so & so is doing now. My friend Heath is (was?) in the Navy last I'd heard. Was he still in when Iraq started? Is he there? I don't know. I emailed a good friend from childhood recently. Will she ever answer? It was through classmates so probably not. I don't like old ghosts haunting me. So I Google them. :) I never find anything, but maybe some day. Or maybe not. And maybe it is better that I don't find them. Keep them in my memory as who they were, not who they are now. The last I'd heard from Heath, for example, was that he was rather bitter over the divorce and subsequent child custody battle for his son. Not at all the fun loving 17 year old I remember. Similarly, periodically I get these pangs about moving back to Alaska... but I know that I would want it to be the Alaska of my memory, not the Alaska it is now. (In my memory all my friends are there, in reality they are scattered all over the US). Maybe this is a sign of getting too old. Nostalgia... pretty soon I'm going to be grousing about how when I was a kid, I had to walk 10 miles to school, up hill both ways in the snow... or about how movies were only $3.75 (oh wait, I do that one now! :D)