Wednesday, May 4, 2005.<\/b> With help of another college friend who e-mailed me out of the blue, I’ve gotten the e-mail address of my freshman roommate. This was well over a month ago, and only now have I written a real letter to him. If Stanford hired a roommate-yenta, she deserved a bonus for putting us together, a great guy. What do I say?<\/p>\n
I finally decided to write of my favorite memories of him. My posted resume tells him the basics about me. Mainly I want to hear about him. Until then, I’ve written about goofy stuff we did.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I’m not writing, not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n
P-: What, I want to say, or ask, do you think happened to what we thought we’d do after graduating?<\/p>\n
You had specific career plans, mine were more vague as undergraduates. I don’t yet know how you found adulthood. All I know is how disgusted I felt five years ago thumbing through the reunion book and reading the summaries individuals put in to recap their last then-20 years. All these people who I thought would be scientists and architects and congressmen and compassionate doctors, all they talked about was the size of their houses, their last ski trips and their perfect spouses and exemplary children. Over and over again.<\/p>\n
My 20 years were not that perfect. I realize theirs weren’t either, that this was a face prit’-near all of them were putting on for show, a Christmas letter to the nth degree.<\/p>\n
But my decades since the June 1980 graduation were not such a steady climb. In 2000, heck, I hadn’t been downsized yet, the beginning of one of the greatest learning experiences ever. Great not meaning a barrel of monkeys<\/p>\n
So, P-, are you disappointed that things didn’t go as planned? It sounds like you’re doing fine now, have a family and all, and I don’t intend to deride that. But were you surprised that it wasn’t easier, more predictable, nicer? Did you know in summer 1980 that no one gets promoted to the next rank or promotion or better office every nine months, plus three months vacation, after college? Office?<\/p>\n
I suppose I knew it, just didn’t understand. That wasn’t very nice of life, for all the articles and parents and older friends telling you clearly about adult life, but you (me) still didn’t understand. Or even believe it would be like that for you. Me. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, May 4, 2005. With help of another college friend who e-mailed me out of the blue, I’ve gotten the e-mail address of my freshman roommate. This was well over a month ago, and only now have I written a real letter to him. If Stanford hired a roommate-yenta, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/01\/taking-or-accepting-responsibility\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":0},"title":"Taking, or accepting, responsibility","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, January 28, 2005: Recalling a dream is not where I want to go with Brick. But what the heck. It's a Brick. It doesn't go anywhere until heaved. That's Krazy Kat's downfall, he realizes just as he sees one heading toward him from Ignatz\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":147,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/mothers-day-2005\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":1},"title":"Mother’s Day 2005","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 8, 2005: An ode to Mother's Day. It's the first one since Mom passed last November. I've started reading a new, and perhaps the only so far, full biography of Ogden Nash. Here is a lede that won't work in my eventual newspaper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/how-you-get-there\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":2},"title":"How you get there","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Friday, July 15, 2005. It would take some nerve to call myself an avid bicyclist. I pedal more than most, and a lot less than others. I biked for fun and for commuting as a teenager, even though I could borrow Mom's Beetle almost whenever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":129,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/cant-get-no-supreme-court-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":3},"title":"Can’t get no (Supreme Court action)","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, July 21, 2005. When we say the president names a nominee who then gets the appointment following the advice and consent of the Senate, we mean everyone from the Cabinet and a few top Executive Branch positions to all the federal judges. So far\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":113,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/09\/whos-in-charge-here-anyway\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":4},"title":"Who’s in charge here, anyway","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005: In contemporary language, we Americans say we love take-charge people, yet we resent controlling people. Are people one thing at home and another at work? This approaches Walter Mitty. Let's think, no, people are as they are all the way through.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/08\/mock-of-the-mockingbird\/","url_meta":{"origin":149,"position":5},"title":"Mock of the Mockingbird","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock \"[Russ A. Charif, a research biologist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology,] said after his talk that the 'kent' sounds alone were not conclusive because scientists could not completely rule out a blue jay mimicking the sound of an ivory bill. ...\" -- The New York\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}