Like looking at an alternate universe ...
Written by Bob McCormick on 2/09/2006 10:20:00 AMWhat a strange bunch of things I've found on the internet lately.
The first thing I found was something called 43things.com, and an associated site - 43places.com. 43things.com and 43places.com are interesting sites - it allows you to decide 43 things that you want to achieve, and 43places.com lets you track 43 places you'd like to visit.
As I filled out my personal 43things and 43places, it occurred to me that I would like to visit Miami again. You see, I lived there during part of my youth - 5th and 6th grade, to be exact, and Miramar, FL, to be exact - back in '73 and '74. So I filled out Miami in my "43places" appropriately.
As I filled out my 43things, one of the things I wanted to do was connect up with old friends. So the next logical thing to think of was to connect, or at least see, what my old friends from Miramar were doing. But how to do that?
Well, my next thought was an old buddy of mine, Joe Piaggio. (Joe Piaggio is just a name I can't forget.) The next logical thing was to use google.com to see if there was any posting of his name in the big, grand internet universe.
And that's when it happened.
One of the interesting posts mentioning a "Joe Piaggio" was of the Miramar HS senior class of 1980 reunion. Apparently, they had taken the pictures from their HS yearbook and posted them on the internet in anticipation of their 20 year reunion ... 6 years ago.
So I looked at them. It was an alternate universe.
Basically, I was looking at pictures of people I knew 30 years ago, but 6 years after I knew them. So, I had to take the mental image of what I remembered them like, and age it 6 years.
Voila! Alternate universe!
What was more astounding was two other facts:
1. These were people who looked quite a bit like people who I did graduate from in Texas in 1980 (no real surprise there, the hairstyles/looks/etc would have been the same).
2. If I were to meet these people today, they would no longer look like what these pictures look like, any more than I look like my HS senior class photo (26 years onward).
The whole thing was surreal.
I began to remember names, and was actually able to place about 8 people ... but of course, they didn't look quite like I remembered (although some looked familiar ... Joe Piaggio did).
It sorta made me wonder "what might have been" ....
Damn this Internet thing!
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