Pre-Web

I realized with a start that I'd never received an email from her before.

Then again, we'd lost touch years ago, during that all-important first semester of college that shows you who you keep in touch with from home and who you don't. It wasn't that anything happened - we just wound up going on different paths and, as a result, the steady exchange of letters written between friends during the first few months of school slowly disappeared as we both adjusted into new life paths.

She was my best friend for much of junior high and high school - back when I was a country music loving teenager who, with her, practiced all the words to John Michael Montgomery's "Sold." She sat in the seat next to me during the Garth Brooks show in Albany junior year (about which my 16-year-old self wrote this - which I just found and laughed myself silly reading. My first review/gush/published love letter to a musician?). We played basketball together, some softball and otherwise just found things to do in a small town without many options. My favorite picture from high school features us in our full school-spirit regalia from a couple of weeks before graduation.

I've had brief catchups with various people I went to high school with - there are some now that I've no problem seeing and just laughing with - but to think that there's so much that occurred between back then and now...it'll be funny to catch up and see what's changed on her end.

But what a random surprise...