Connecting...and Disconnecting With Old Friends

I've had, or once had, 5 friends named David. Whenever I talk about "my friend David" with my wife, I have to clarify which one I'm talking about. There's....

David in Taiwan
David in San Francisco
David in Orange County, CA
David in Chili, New York
David in the wheelchair

I haven't spoke to the "David in the wheelchair" since the early 80's, so I probably shouldn't even include him.

The only "David" that I keep in contact with these days is the one in Taiwan. I guess he and I have the closest relationship of any of the "David's"

I spoke to David in Taiwan the other day. I called him using "Skype." My wife's sister has an account there that she lets us use to call Taiwan, so it's free to us. I told David that he should get Skype and then we can talk to each other for free, but he seemed to be totally oblivious to what Skype was or how it worked. I think living in Taiwan for the past 5 years has kept him out of the loop of pretty much everything.

It seems whenever I talk to David, we end up talking for a long time, but rarely about anything that interesting. I don't know why. The conversations will start off okay. We'll talk about what's new in our lives, etc. Then, the conversation will just....change. By the time I logged off of Skype, we were talking about the cartoon characters that McDonalds used to use in their products. We ended up talking about "Hamburgler," "Grimace," and "Mayor McCheese." WTF??

I guess that's one of the reasons I enjoy talking to him, because our conversations are always so random. Both my wife and his girlfriend think we're crazy.

As far as latest developments go, David has renewed his contract with the school that he works for in Kaohsiung, and he is still planning to get married to his girlfriend Pi Chi someday.

I talk to all the other David's by email or instant message, except for the one in Chili, New York. I hadn't talked to him for about 10 years. I don't even know his email address. However, I happened to be really bored one day and I googled his name, just to see if I could find him. I didn't....but....I found his wife. I didn't even realize he was married. He's married to a woman named Grace who runs a blog for the "Democrat and Chronicle" in Chili. So I wrote an email to Grace, and I wrote a message on her blog, basically telling her who I was and I asked her to tell David to write to me. To this day I haven't gotten any reply.

I thought about reasons he might not want to talk to me. The only one I could think of was that we both were dating the same girl back in 1989, unbeknownst to each other. Once we finally found out about it, we called her on the phone, and through a speaker we both dumped her at the same time. I think it's possible he still has some raw feelings about those days. It's been 20 years, can he still be holding a grudge? Who knows. He's got 2 kids now, just like me, and about the same age too. It would have been nice to compare parenting stories.

"David in Chili, New York" was my best friend before I met "David in Taiwan" in 1983, but these two hated each other. "David in Chili" was a bit of a goofball, while "David in Taiwan" was more of the serious, intellectual type. "David in Chili" liked zombie movies and liked to run around saying "Doy! Doy! Doy!" all the time. "David in Taiwan" liked Woody Allen movies and writing poetry. For me it seemed natural to shift my interests to "David in Taiwan."

Maybe I hang onto the past too much. I try to keep in contact with people who really don't want to be in contact anymore. David isn't the only one. Sometimes you just have to come to the realization that it's time to move on.