I remember around May of 1997, we had about a month left at Westlake High School. We had just gotten our yearbooks and people were going around getting them signed. I had about 6 or 7 full pages of notes, from people expressing their unending friendship to people saying they wished they had gotten to know me better. I wrote many of those types of entries. Even then I was on my own “d”, thinking to myself as I penned something poignant to someone I considered a true friend, “This is probably the note they are going to look back on years from now and feel the fondest about.” I have to laugh at my own arrogance sometimes, especially in light of my outward actions.

At any rate, now some seven years removed, it’s amazing how few of those people I actually keep in touch with, especially considering how much of a nostalgia-head I am.

Now usually I have a policy of not using the whole legal name of people in this blogger, for privacy’s sake, but in this case I actually HOPE that some of the people I’m going to mention do a google search or something and pull up their names.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to a few of the people I used to hang out with and stuff. People like Elenda Stanley and Christal Webb. I made mention of them before in this journal somewhere. Back in High School they were inseperable, wherever you saw one you saw the other. We took Latin together in my Sophomore year and that’s when we got really cool.

The last time I saw Elenda was probably one of the FAMU vs. TSU games in Atlanta. She was down at Florida A&M and I don’t even really know what her major was. Even when I saw her, it was in passing and we didn’t really talk for very long.

Christal was one of my best friends for real, but I REALLY fell off. She became a victim of my laziness. We played e-mail tag all the way through college and when she finished school she joined the military to pay off her school debt or something. She wrote letters and such, but I never really maintained contact.

I also wonder about my boy Anthony Turner. There were actually two dudes in my graduating class with that name. They were always being confused for one another, and no doubt, if this page is ever turned up on a net search it’ll probably happen again. Typically they were differentiated by their skin-tone (I mean we are talking about a 99.9% Black Suburban high school…that was the easiest way). Anyway I’m talking about the one I took most of my classes with “dark-skinned” Anthony. I “kept-up” with him through other people, and I heard he finished Xavier University of New Orleans early and went to med school, which would mean he probably graduated this year.

Who else is there in the Killa Cal missing in action files? There is James Fletcher and Chris Speed. There’s Heather Varner and Ricci Wright and Towanda Smith and Nikia Hopkins. I haven’t heard from most of them since 1998 at the very latest.

I wonder what happened to these folks. Did they go across the country like my boy Brandon Smallwood and get married and start a family? Are they somewhere working a 9-to-5 just trying to make it? Are they moving up the corporate ladder? Are they happy with their life? Do they ever think about other people from Westlake (including me) and wonder what they are up to?

I hope this didn’t come off as obsessive or whatever, I just have a memory like that (I mean look at the past two entries with the movie and tv trivia).

Speaking of the movie trivia, I’ll post the answers tomorrow. There was much less participation this time, I think that’s a sign I need to wait awhile before doing it again.

However last night I had a few rounds of “Stump the Killa” starting with movies, then television over at Julian and TaTa’s (yes I was on my own “d” very hard flexing my vast stores of useless knowledge, even though I was stumped quite a few times). TaTa made some OUTSTANDING lasagna also. Oh and we played men versus women in Taboo and absolutely OWNED THE WOMEN.

I hear that Julian is now in trouble, but it’s probably my fault. I made some EXTREMELY sexist comments in the aftermath of our 99 to 67 drubbing of the women. I will not repeat those comments here, because I don’t want to lose any more readers than I already have, but it had to do with my antiquated views on gender roles. Of course I was half joking, but in light of the whipping we laid on the ladies I probably would have been better served not saying it at all.

At any rate, that’s all for now folks, I’m trying to catch a late breakfast!