Going Forward, Facing Backwards

Last year at this time I was in Washington D.C. attending the national Association of Zoo and Aquarium Docents (AZAD) conference. But that was just my convenient, albeit worthy, cover story.

Let me see. How do I tie two story lines together? I'll start back in 2004. Was it really that long ago? I got an email from someone I've known since 5th grade. She had always been one of my most favorite people and one of only two friends who I had my picture taken with after our high school graduation ceremony. But after that night I lost contact with almost everyone.

Charlene was an exception, but just briefly. I was driving to work at my job as a travel agent in Salt Lake City one morning, scanning the dial for a radio station, when I heard her voice. She was doing the news for a country and western station. I was thrilled for a couple of reasons. First, I missed her friendship and second, it was great knowing that she was putting her exceptional talent to such good use. Her dramatic style, comic timing and delicious personality was what attracted me to her way back in 1968! In fact I thought it was funny that she was doing the news because I knew how hard it was for her to not be funny!

I called her radio station from work and we had a nice chat. But after that came a gap of some twenty five years. That's a long time. Five minutes is a long time sometimes. But during that long, long quarter-century when I managed to lose contact with essentially everyone from my childhood, came a marvelous invention: the Internet!

During those years I was blind to what was happening in the computer revolution. I was selling tickets, loading passengers and baggage onto airplanes at the Oakland, CA airport and working myself into a disabling condition in both arms typing furious using the United Airlines computer systems. One of my friends talked about buying a "Mac" but I had no idea what she was talking about. Other friends started having conversations including words like "email address" and "PC" but it just didn't register. But I do remember wondering why in the world anyone would spend hard-earned money on a home computer just to keep in contact with friends. Ha!

But, lest I digress too far, by the time I got something from Classmates.com in my "snail mail" I must have had some idea what was going on. It made me think about all the people from school and wonder what had become of everyone. But not so much that I felt like I needed to rush out and buy a computer.

Okay, now, fast forward about 14 more years. By then I owned a computer and had learned to search. I had found Charlene's name on Classmates.com but was too cheap to pay their membership fee to get her email address. And because she hadn't contacted me, I figured that: 1-She was as cash-poor as me, or 2-She would have contacted me already if she had cared to.

Those were rough years for me. I avoided class reunions because I was supposed to have been a big movie director by then but only ended up as a travel agent and airline slave. I didn't reach out to anyone because I was ashamed for being a big failure.

That didn't stop me from trying to find out about former classmates and friends though. And Charlene was the one I searched for the most. About two years ago I thought I'd zeroed in on her. But being unable to find a current photo I couldn't be sure. And it didn't make sense that she would be working for a radio station in the Washington D.C. area. I don't know why not, though. I had moved to the west coast.

And at that same time, one day out of the blue, I got an email from her asking me if I was the Jim Webb that she knew. I was so thrilled. And when she said that I was the only person from high school that she wanted to "reunite" with, it felt like blood was percolating up into my head and bringing the rest of my half-dead body back to life. And yes, it was the same person I had found in online searches and she was still in radio, now with an "abc.com" email address!

We wrote back and forth and chatted for hours on AOL Instant Messenger, covering just about everything. Weeks went by. And then came our chance to meet for the first time since that photo was taken.

I went along with Brad on a business trip to New York City and arranged for us to take Amtrak to D.C. afterward, stay with Charlene for a couple of nights and then fly home from there.

Well, that turned out to be a really great trip. And talk about a trip! Charlene's oldest daughter was about the same age as we were when we posed for that graduation photo. I think we both felt like we were in a perpetual commercial for Classmates.com. It was just that good.

When we left, she invited us to come back. At the time I felt like it would be highly unlikely that I'd ever be back in the D.C. area so imagine my surprise when I learned only a few weeks later that the AZAD conference was being hosted by the Washington Smithsonian National Zoo in just a few months! I immediately made plans to attend.

But only a few weeks before the conference I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. It was my first hospital confinement since an emergency unilateral epididymectomy in the early 1980's. But three weeks later I was almost as good as new and flying off to enjoy the company of fellow zoo people, Charlene and her fabulous cats and human family. It was a great trip. (Except for the return flights but I'll save that for another time.)

Oh, I nearly forgot about the other story line.

At the AZAD conference, Emily, the editor of our docent newsletter, was trying to get me to attend a workshop with her relating to editing or writing or something. I felt bad for not going after I said I would but the previous workshops I'd been to were incredibly crowded and overwhelmingly boring. I actually fell while asleep during one of them and if I hadn't been sitting next to a wall I might have hurt myself. But the International Spy Museum and just about everything else in Washington D.C. seemed much more worthwhile.

Thinking back now I have the feeling that Emily has been buttering me up for quite a long time. She just recently managed to get me to agree, without any resistance, to take over as editor of The Scoop after her last edition in 2006.

I should be petrified but I'm not. Just because my most recent practical experience was in 1976 is no reason to panic. All I have to do is learn how to use a computer program and I'm sure the skills I learned as Editor-in-Chief of the Tooele High School Buffalog will be just like riding that proverbial bicycle.

Okay, now I'm petrified. I haven't put that bicycle theory to the test either.

But all of this seems related somehow. All my old friends were so incredibly talented. I thought I was incredibly talented too until after I left Utah and got out into the job market with the rest of the poor cake-eating slobs.

Old friends, new friends - old skills, new applications - dreams of being a film director, making my own movies using a PC - loving animals, working at a zoo - Is it all coming together somehow? Maybe I'm actually going somewhere, possibly in the "right" direction, but just facing backwards.