Wednesday, July 21st, 1976

Never thought I'd see the day! This proves that all things, now matter how unlikely, are possible! Who turned up at our door today but James Paul Hunzinger, my best friend from when we first moved here ten years ago!!! Jimmy Paul! Oh, my gosh, he's changed, though! I didn't even recognize him at first. Muscles, karate, cigarettes. He said they were just in the area and he took a chance to see if I still lived here! He seems much more mature than most people I know our age. Weird! Dad almost didn't let him in at first. We ended up talking for an hour. I took a picture of him to remember.

The past is not dead. You never know who will turn up again. I may yet call Phyllis!

I went over the river later but decided against seeing a movie. Just picked up some Wendys. Spent the rest of the day finishing up my reading . I felt inspired at the end! I need to do something creative!

NOTES: Yes, I still have that photograph but to protect his privacy, I'm not running it. When someone leaves your life, perhaps inevitably you always remember them they way they were at the moment you last saw them. This was probably the first instance where I really realized that people were constantly changing and that nothing ever remained static. It was fun catching up with Jimmy Paul but it also drove home just how far we had grown apart. He lived around the corner from us when we first moved in and stayed about a year more before moving away. We had been inseparable at age 7.

Phyllis was a girl who had lived next door to us where we had lived before. She was a year or two younger than me which means she was like three when I was five. That said, when I was about 13, she called one day and we started talking regularly on the phone. She was someone I had known and yet we had both grown considerably. I had enjoyed talking to her on the phone but eventually just quit returning her calls. I had been thinking of calling her again an Jimmy Paul's reappearance was pushing me in that direction. An even more unexpected person would turn up in just a few weeks.

As far as Wendys, it's ironic that yesterday, in 2011, I told the manager of the local Wendys that I wouldn't be going back there for the near future after the tenth incident in a year where they got my order incorrect. In this case, they added cheese to what should have been---and were correctly rung in as---my son's completely plain, no cheese hamburgers. When I took them back, the guy tossed the old ones, apologized and remade them. When I got home...THEY STILL HAD CHEESE!!!! What in the world did he think he was correcting??

The number one song on the US charts this week in 1976 was "Kiss And Say Goodbye" by the Manhattans, a New Jersey R & B group still together after 45 years.