long time, no see

if i run into more than one old friend a month, it's been an unusually busy month for me. so imagine my surprise when i managed to bump into not one but three old school chums this past sunday alone. one from high school. one from my undergrad days. and one from law school. now perhaps i'm over analyzing matters, but i've always been of the mindset that every word uttered by my former comrades during these little run-ins must necessarily come under intense scrutiny. you see, sometimes you gotta read between the lines a little if you wanna know what's what. to begin with, the initial greeting is typically the source of a great deal of vital information, and not all of it enunciated. for instance, over the years i've come to learn that "hey, i didn't recognize you" is a not-so-thinly-veiled euphemism for "you lost all your hair" or "you got fat" or "i never really knew you that well in the first place." meanwhile, pleasantries exchanged later on in the conversation can likewise yield just as much critical (albeit subliminal) data. "i heard you got married" is actually code for "i can't believe that someone agreed to spend the rest of her life with you." "so where are you living now?" really means "so how much dough are you earning these days?" "do you have any kids?" roughly translates as "you had sex?" and finally, "hey, we should really get together some time" is better understood as "i have no intention of ever speaking to you again following this conversation." ah, the good ol' days.

"we do not remember days; we remember moments." - cesare pavese

if only it were that simple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n1W6_L1ZOg