A lifetime of faces

My email on my incredibly modern computer keeps locking up and crashing, so I thought I'd write a little. Only the finest, most modern tools for the employees at my company, I tell you!

I got my hair cut by a lesbian named "Robin" last night with crazy spiraled hair (straight out of the 80s) and a voice that could be Hugh Grant's sister's. I was happy that the event lasted three and a half hours (record-breaking!) so that I could listen to that accent, soak up the conversation. She had unusually large eyes, kind eyes, and a dark olive skin passed down to her through her half English, half-Jamaican bloodlines. She was passionate about hiking (yah, LA is not all about Hollywood, she said). She went on a rant, naming six or seven trails I could do by myself and I wondered, as she sliced through my hair quick with her scissors, if she realized just how out of shape I am. I told her I was going to her mother country this spring, and that when I come back to see her after the holidays for another slice-fest, that I'd bring a notepad and she'd have to tell me where I should go in London. Funny the things you can find out about your hair lady, eh?

Another update - So I sent my ex boyfriend (not that one, you fools! an ex-boyfriend from my college days) an email yesterday. He goes to law school at USC. You can tell we're great friends now when I can email him to tell him that I'm newly single and that he'll have to introduce me to his cute law school friends. He wrote back promptly and agreed, and I was touched by his sweet note. He was really nice about the whole thing, asking when we could get together, that his friends will really like me, etc.

I'm reminded, when I receive notes such as those, why I do stay in touch with just about everyone. I still talk to the girl I used to live next door to in Maryland when I was 12 and under. I email my sophomore-year college professor who taught me about writing reflective essays. I'll write a note to a friend I went to school with in seventh grade, "How's your new job treating you?" and give advice to the girl I used to ride bikes with in sixth grade, or cry with her over dinner when she tells me about the death of her father, after not having seen her in more than two years. I wonder why I seem to hold on so much; does a part of me live in the past? And when the Maryland kids moved in around the corner from me in Brentwood, I didn't just run into them at the market, I knew they were coming...because I had been in touch this whole time, with these old, familiar faces that I used to wait with at the bus stop back east.

And how strange is it that my first date "post-Chris" was with a guy just a few houses over from my parents' home in Maryland? And he tells me stories from high school and I say, "Oh, I remember them, I remember him," but when he tries to tell me the street names, how the road curved a certain way, or about a housing development a few miles down the road, that is where I get lost.

I just remember the faces and the names.