Whatever Happened To—

I like to think of life as a novel.  Page one we’re born, last page we die, poetically, one hopes.  I know there are many religions and beliefs that say we don’t die, we’re just transformed.  And yet, the writing we can read sort of stops with that last page.

Throughout our pilgrim’s progress, we meet so many people who come into our lives and then just disappear into the vast wilderness of moving on.  Sometimes, like now, especially in my old age, I wonder whatever happened to them.

So that’s the question I’m pondering and exploring.  In some cases I’ll use their real names—just in case they’ll get in touch, a very long shot.  In other cases, because of the delicacy of the situation, I won’t.  I’ll just tell their storied connections to my life.  And with still others I won’t mention their circumstances at all, as I’m sure they’ve gone on to better lives.  Nor will I mention those whose pages in their novels have already ended.

I shall start in grade school.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to mention every single person I ever knew.  Being an introvert, that list actually wouldn’t be so long, and yet—boring?

My first best friend was Yvonne Reed.  We both lived in Nanuet when it was a small, rural community, before the city of New York overflowed into Rockland County.  We used to have the greatest fun on the playground, mainly skipping rope and reciting rhymes wherein we’d know at least the first initial of the man we would marry.  I can remember going to her house once after school and getting a beating for it, as I didn’t tell my mother first.  Did I have a cell phone in 1947?  Yvonne had a beautiful voice.  We were once in a talent show together where they wouldn’t let us sing “Sh-Boom” because they said it had questionable lyrics.  Really?  Oh, those teachers and their dirty minds.

Another friend was Judy Brown, an incomer who lived in a new housing development.  All I can remember about her is her freckles, but I know we used to be close in grade school.  And thus began my obsession with the name “Judy.”  I cannot even count the number of close friends I’ve had named “Judy.”  I even named my daughter “Judith,” called “Judy,” among other prime names.

As far as the guys, there was the cute Walter Gallagher.  He was on the student council with me.  I still remember one council meeting in a quiet classroom where, instead of counseling, we all played spin the bottle.  Walter was my first kiss!  Yum!

 Roger Beyer, he was my first boner.  In seventh and eighth grades we had dance nights, where we got the chance to practice dances we learned in gym.  Let’s just say that during one slow dance something was poking into my leg, and it wasn’t a pencil.

I often wonder what happened to Ross Horowitz.  There was a miscommunication here.  He asked me to dance.  At least that’s what I thought he said, but no, he asked me to the dance.  When he stopped at my house to pick me up, I was already at the school, probably waiting for the Sadie Hawkins dance.  He should have been more explicit.  I did wonder that night why he never came over to ask me for a dance.

He was a bright kid and known for being from a divorced family and also being the first kid we ever heard swear in school.  And this included some of our fellow students who had been in reform school.  Well, he was from the city, after all.

After eighth grade, I left the cozy nest of people I had grown up with all my life and was plunged into Nyack high school. UGH!  Needless to say, despite my sterling personality, I wasn’t popular in high school.  But even an unpopular person picks up a few friends.

My best friend all through high school was Marsha Magee.  She lived in Valley Cottage, so geographically we weren’t close, but oh, the times we spent together, both in school and over the phone.  Our main conversations centered on how much we hated our mothers.  I can’t quite believe it now but honestly we spent hours on the subject.  And that was before cell phones.  We’d especially call one another at Christmas and complain about our gifts.

Actually, her mother was very nice—to me.  She had a thing for Frank Sinatra.  Although Marsha and I stuck together almost to the end of our senior year, she got a boyfriend, which put a damper on our lunchtime breaks down in Nyack because she preferred being with him—in his car!

Then she went to West Point, where the academy would import local girls for dances with the cadets.  It was there she met someone called Tommy. They married, while I was in college!  And don’t worry, Marsha, I don’t believe the story that, when the gang of ours went to New York to shop, you exchanged your ratty old raincoat for a new one and left the old one on the hanger.  Who tells tales like that!

Yes, by senior year I had developed a gang of friends who went places together, especially the city.  We were basically all in the same homeroom, which made it convenient for planning our adventures.  Aside from Marsha, there was Diane Lewis.  Diane and I used to practice our New York Jewish accents.  We had a good routine going.  She was free-spirited and funny.  Her goal was to become a rabbi.  Not marry one, become one.  Perhaps that was a part of her I never quite got.  On the other hand, another member of our cohort Ann Langdon wanted to become a nun.  You see, we were very ecumenical.  She was quiet and still within herself and yet a great deal of fun.  As was the final member of our group, Marion.  She was so much fun, red hair, sly sense of humor.  Her aim was to be an artist.

Sad to say, after high school I lost touch with all of them.  Even my senior-year boyfriend.  Sigh.  I was glad to have a date for senior prom, although I can remember having a vast pimple on my chin.  How ruinous for the evening.

His name was Bob Sherry and I met him when I decided to go to work my senior year, as I had really nothing going on in my life.  The store was like a K-Mart and sold everything.  That was before cash registers were automatic.  We had to not only check out items, but also bag them, then take cash and make the correct change.  If you were off more than fifty cents, you were suspected of pocketing some money.  Crazy!  This is why we so carefully counted the coins in the rolls they gave us.

What a job.  I liked the people I worked with, but I hated standing on my feet all day, after which they were swollen and hurt like hell.  Why can’t the United State be like most civilized countries and let the checkers sit down behind the counters?  Okay, I guess that’s an aside.

Anyway, I met Bob at work.  He was from another high school and my mother loved him.  Isn’t that always the killer in a relationship?  But senior year, you gotta do what you gotta do.

We used to drive along the Palisades Parkway and dip into one of the overlooks and make out like crazy.  Legs were always crossed, at least mine were.  Honestly, people.  But I sort of soured on Bob when I learned that his previous girlfriend was on the plump side; and I’m thinking, does he like plump girls, does he consider me plump?

He was a very nice guy, but I have to sadly say this, boring.  He wanted to keep in touch after high school.  I didn’t.

College was awash in bad memories.  Although I still have two friends from college I keep in touch with, I really never found a group to hang with.  This must sound strange since it was the University of Michigan with millions of students.  But maybe I was dealing with too many of my own problems to really enjoy the rah rah spirit of Go Blue.  Certainly, I told the alumni office, when they contacted me for a donation, that I hated Michigan and would never consider giving it a cent.  That stopped the phone calls.

However, there are two people I think of, both men.  One was named Floyd and he was a riot, good-looking, Jewish, red hair, wanting to be a doctor but graduated without the grades.  From Lawrence, Long Island, he was planning to get his grades up at another school so he could reapply for med school.

He joined a fraternity and I went to one of the parties.  Good god, vulgar and ridiculous.  (No, I didn’t join a sorority.  The thought of the crap I’d have to go through and then being nice to my “sisters.”  Me?  Get real.)  I think Floyd was pulled two ways, me and a sorority-girl type.  I’m sure in the end, he chose to go with the latter.  But on the dates we did have, he was hysterical.

He had a motorcycle that his mother finally convinced him to get rid of, but we rode it, me in a dress and then he got off of it and pretended to be blind, then got on it again and drove wildly around the quad, yelling, “I can’t see.  I can’t see.” I was laughing my head off.  Gee, I hope he had a wonderful life because he was a great guy.

The other man I met was a graduate student named Ted, and this proves just how shallow I was.  He was a teaching assistant in physical anthropology, a class I loved.  Of course, I got an A, I think.  Afterwards, he asked me on a date and I went and it was fine, but, he was funny looking so I didn’t go out with him again.  How stupid I was.

Upon leaving college, I took a job for which I was totally ill-equipped, and that was as a junior high teacher.  Those children were ill-served by me and frankly by the whole educational system in Rochester, New York, after the riots.

The school was divided between blacks and Italians and neither side liked the other.  Very few of the ninth graders could pass the Regents, even my best students.  But I met someone there of another persuasion, color-wise.  And we began a relationship.

I cannot even relate the language my father used when he found out about it.  I will call my boyfriend Chester after one of my favorite students.  Chester was quite a decent human being.  He was on a break from the army, where he was serving in Vietnam and had already received a Purple Heart.  His stay in Rochester wasn’t going to be long, as he had to return to Vietnam.

At that time mixed couples weren’t as accepted as they are today, and we got plenty of looks from both sides of the color line.

Would I have stayed with him, if I weren’t leaving Rochester because I was so incompetent as a teacher and if he wasn’t going back to Vietnam?  I have my doubts.  Because I noticed something about him I didn’t like.  He was becoming possessive.  I don’t like to be possessed.

So that was it.  He wrote one letter and I wrote one letter back, not a Dear John letter. I can’t even remember what I wrote.  But I moved on to another career path which ended abruptly when I met my husband and married him within two months.

But I always thought fondly of Chester; and finally, after several visits to the Vietnam War Memorial, they had a book listing the dead.  Thankfully, his name wasn’t in it.

So that was it, I thought.  But years later, my mother told me Chester had called when he returned from Vietnam, and she told him I was married.  She could have told me at the time.  But she waited decades.

I wish Chester well and hope he had a wonderful life.

Funny how now it’s much harder for people to get lost.  There are so many tech connections to be made.  Frankly, it’s harder not to be found, if someone knows how to look.  I don’t count myself among that number, but then not that many people are missing from my life anymore.

Except—-

There are two people in Israel I’d like to be in touch with again.  One is Israela Weisal.  She and I worked together at the Economics Department at Tel Aviv University.  I have to say half the professors were total blockheads.  But that’s besides the point now.

I remember when I was first hired, I asked Israela if we ever got a break.  Little did I know that most of the day was a break.  Then the work we actually got was mindless.  Still, she was fun and I enjoyed talking to her.  When my husband and I took our trip into the Sinai, she babysat our two kids and later came to the bar mitzvah of the oldest one.  But by the time my third child, a son, was ready to be bar mitzvahed, she was living in Jerusalem—why move from wonderful Tel Aviv to Jerusalem I have no idea—and she didn’t come to the party.  After that, nothing. There’s another one I hope has been blessed with a happy life.

Natie Eliash was a friend of my husband’s from the Technion.  He came to all the bar mitzvahs and every time we visited Haifa, he arranged for Abe’s classmates—that were also friends of Natie’s--to come to his house for a party.  He also took us on tours around Haifa, showing us places we or at least I hadn’t seen on our own.  He was such an ebullient man; and I would love to let him know what’s happened to his former classmate, but—no way to get in touch.

And there it is—so far.  People who meant so much to me fading away into a distance I can’t reach.  But who knows when another page will be written?  I don’t.