Hey Valerie it’s Me James

I’m not a bad friend; I won’t seduce your husband or talk behind your back, which is, I’m aware, a very low bar, but I’m also not a great one either. I spend a lot of time in my head, some of it spent thinking about my friends, but very little action comes of it. Ask me to meet for coffee and I’ll be there. Wait for me to invite you and you will, most likely, never have coffee with me. It’s not because I don’t like you or don’t like coffee, I just don’t think about it. Terrible, I know. I’m kind of a happy, house person, happy with my audiobooks, my pets, and my plants. What I’m saying is, it’s not you, it’s me. My friends are okay with this. Now, most (all?) my friends are faraway friends. There is a lot of downtime between communications. They don’t take it personally and I appreciate it.

At this point, you might well be wondering if I’m supposed to MAKE A FRIEND. Nope, this week it’s all about how to BECOME A PEN PAL.

I think my last pen pal was Lee. In the time before cell phones and email, yes, my child, way back in the 1900s, when someone you loved got on a ship and floated on the other side of the world, you put pen to paper, stuffed an envelope, licked a stamp (yes, licked), and sent a letter. For six months, as Lee completed his first deployment to the Western Pacific, stopping at ports like Subic Bay in the Philippeans and Pohang, South Korea, I lived in our apartment in Vista, California. We wrote back and forth, our thoughts and activities suspended in time until they could be opened and read. Yes, my child, we did have telephones, but a great miracle was required to complete a 10-15 minute phone call. To talk by phone the ship had to be in port, Lee had to stand in line for an extended period of time waiting for a payphone, and I needed to be at home, not school or work or the mall. Returning to the apartment to hear a message on the answering machine, how shall I put it, sucked.

I have a pen pal now, just not a snail mail one. I first met James 10 years ago, on a Wednesday night not long after I started working again at the Onslow County Public Library. He introduced himself, told me he did Special Olympics, and showed me his medals. He was a regular, using his sessions on the public computers, checking out DVDs, and chatting with library staff. James has a friendly nature and a magical brain. He loves movies and he has a memory for actors. Nights could be quiet in the library and we started to play a game we called Kevin Bacon. I would give James two actors and, starting with one he’d go movie by movie until he connected them together, just like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It might go something like this:

Me: Jodie Foster and Tom Hiddleston

James: Jodie Foster was in Sommersby with Richard Gere and Richard Gere was in Internal Affairs with Andy Garcia and Andy Garcia was in Desperate Measures with Michael Keaton and Michael Keaton was in Jackie Brown with Samuel Jackson and Samuel Jackson was in Kong Skull Island with Tom Hiddleston.

Me:

No Google, no phone a friend, just pure brain power. It was an amazing thing to be a part of.

When I was moving to California, almost four years later, James asked me for my phone number. A few staff members were unsure when I gave it to him. James could be an ever-presence in the library, he lived close, and when he wasn’t working his very part-time job at Pizza Hut or bowling or doing yoga or going to the Good Times Dance or just leading his very busy life, he could often be found at the library. James had a rudimentary flip phone and I’d never seen him talk on it. He used it more to take pictures, and not very good ones based on the ones I’d been shown, so I figured what would it hurt.

I was right. It didn’t hurt. I left the library and Onslow County over seven years ago, and I can now count my friendship with James as one of my longest-running and most continuous. He texts me every Tuesday.

Over the years we’ve missed, at most, a week or two. We often chat using What’sApp now but the pattern and the content remain the same. I am sure I am not the only person that James texts. I’m the Tuesday person. There is most likely a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, one too.

James has been a constant in my life. I’ve moved three times since we first met and no matter where I live or what time zone I’m in, through COVID and presidential elections and multiple Hurricanes playoff losses, James has been there; with two questions and an ongoing connection. Our friendship has endured because James is the initiator. He texts me. I text back. I have reached out to him on the few weeks he’s missed but, just like all my friends, he’s the one who pulls me along. And, I’m grateful for it.

Here are two books about friendship, connection, and loss that I read recently and think you might enjoy:

To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse is the story of a woman ahead of her time. It touches on the loneliness of genius and the disconnect of being something other than what society expects. If you want to hear Connie Converse’s music, I highly recommend the audiobook. Thank you to my daughter, Elisabeth, for recommending this book to me.

Grief is for People, a beautifully written memoir about losing a friend, is an exploration of loss that manages, at times, to also be quite funny.

Thank you for reading!

Before you go…this AI-assisted excerpt for this blog post cracks me up:

The author reflects on their tendency to be a distant friend and the value of pen pal connections. They reminisce about a previous pen pal and share a heartwarming story about their current pen pal, James. The enduring friendship with James is highlighted, and the author recommends two books about friendship and loss.

I think they nailed it.