Monday, July 21, 2008

another happy birthday

I'm very happy to discover, on my 53rd birthday, that while blog titles still translate themselves into some unknown and undecipherable (to me) script, I can now, by using the drop down menu for each word, translate the titles back into English.

I ran into my old friend (from high school, whom I've known for 35 years, and whose birthday is today, too) at the wake of our mutual friend's father. We have not spoken in more than three years, except for a note of condolence I sent her on the occasion of her sister becoming gravely ill and entering a nursing home. She emailed a reply to my written note, to an old account which I didn't check until several months after she replied. Did this piss her off further? I don't know; her email, in any case, was of the generic "thank you for your expression of sympathy" type, and seemed to need no reply from me.

I knew that I would be running into her on some occasion just like this. In fact, I thought it would be at our mutual friend's mother's wake/funeral, but our friend's father died first. (All three of us went to the same Catholic high school.) I hugged her hello when she arrived at the wake; she blew me off. I tried again when she was leaving. I hugged her again--she stiffened like an autistic child--and I said, "So, do we still have a hatchet to bury, or are we going to be OK?" She walked away from me, saying over her shoulder, "Weeeelll, relationships change, I guess."

I guess they do.

Especially when one person in the relationship suddenly stops kissing the other one's ass.

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