A Cluck From The Darkness

One of the very first posts I ever made to this little record was a rather long indulgence into friendship called, The Rooster and the Chicken. In it I described the Boy's fickleness in the application of the "my Best Friend" appellation. I also described my best friends including my oldest best friend with whom I had become estranged after thirty years for no apparent reason - he had simply stopped answering my calls and emails. Our last conversations a year earlier had mystified me by their cold abruptness. The final straw for me had been when I discovered by accident that he and his wife had moved to whereabouts unknown months earlier. It was sad, confusing and utterly out of character for him.

The night before last we had guests visit from out of town. One of them has maintained contact with this old pal "J" throughout the estrangement by means of a fantasy football league of which "J" is the Commish. My guest was entirely unaware of the estrangement when he told me that in the middle of the draft for the playoffs last December "J" just stopped contact and as a result the league, which has a twenty year history, imploded. My guest asked if I knew what was going on with "J" and I told him I had no idea and explained the circumstances, which he found more than a little odd.

That conversation prompted a long text convo I had with Curry yesterday morning regarding "J". I described the situation to him in detail. I told him how "J" and I had never gone more than a week without contact, usually a couple of hours on the phone (sometimes as long as 8 or 10 hours), and so the complete disappearance was without precedence. Curry agreed it was quite strange.

Well, in a moment of cosmic weirdness the likes of which I have rarely experienced, yesterday evening, out of the blue, I got an email. It arrived not at my regular email account but to my crap - send the junk - account. The subject line was "Greer?" and the email read:

Dude,

Was registering on the SHS Reunion page and now see you have a "Greer" listed. Congrats!! How's it going out there? We should have a chat. Call me or let me know a good time to call.

J

That was it - not a word regarding his whereabouts. Nothing at all regarding the nearly three years of unanswered calls, emails, letters. Not a thing regarding the fact that he moved nearly two years ago without informing me of a new address or phone number. Nothing to explain his utter disappearance from the radar. And the "Call me" request seems entirely oblivious of the fact that he has a new number to which I have never been privy. I even sensed a slight indignation that he had not been informed regarding our latest child, even though the birth announcement, like the Christmas cards before it, had landed back in our mailbox - "Return to Sender - addressee unknown."

The timing of yesterday's email after two years of silence, and especially following the conversations with my guest and Curry, noodled this one right into the twilight zone.

What had been a sad, disturbing mystery, has now become outright bizarre.

Oh, and the whole "Dude" thing - what is up with that?

addendum: I forwarded the email and my reponse to Curry yesterday. Curry said, based on everything that's happened, I probably won't hear from him and then one day I'll get an email that will read:

"Dude, Hope you're having a happy new year. Can you believe it's 3026 already?!?!"