What makes us “move on”? I’ve often pondered that.

You have your usual answers, things like a decrease in common interests, goals, and desires.

When I was in my twenties I hung out with a completely different crowd than I do now. It’s not that I didn’t like them, I loved those people. But I moved on. They had become interested in certain activities that I really wanted little to do with, and you had this gradual separation. But when I think about them, I feel nothing but fondness and warmth.

I hope the feeling is mutual.

There’s a line from a brilliant Pink Floyd song that makes me think of these old friends who I’ve fallen out of contact with. David Gilmour was never known for his lyrics, but he pulled it off on the song “Poles Apart”.

Back in 1994, I had an apartment with a friend in Mesa Arizona. Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell had come out, and the band even flew a psychedelic air blimp across the town. Talk about surreal. I remember us drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Gilmour’s oceanic guitar solo. We were 20, had our own place, and were kings of the world! And the Division Bell was our soundtrack for those few months.

But it doesn’t just end there. It goes back to college, to high school, to junior high, to elementary school. And Mr. Gilmour says it better than I ever could:

I thought of you, and the years and all the sadness fell away from me.

Pink Floyd – Poles Apart

I don’t think any of us could’ve predicted where we’d be now. But does it matter? After all, it was always the journey that mattered, not the destination.

We know that now, don’t we?

So to my former fellow classmates and trapper keeper fashionistas, to those from Indian Prairie in what used to be a freaking cornfield in Aurora, to you who hailed from Madison Junior high and beyond…this post is dedicated to you. And so is my story “Storm Fronts” in the upcoming Old, Weird South Anthology.

Hey you, did you ever realize what you’d become?

We are halfway.