I have a friend I’ve known for about five or six years. He’s a good guy, his kids like my kids, we share hobbies – fantastic adult friendship all around. But since I met him as a full-grown adult, he pretty much only knows this version of me. He didn’t “grow up” with me the way some of my other friends have.
But he has his own history, of course. And though we didn’t know each other growing up, we did grow up in the same area.
Just this week, he told me a story from his own youth, just something he’d heard (not something he had been present for). A pretty wild story, by all accounts, that a friend of his had told him about a party, et cetera et cetera.
And then I started laughing.
The story was about me.
We traced back the origins – the person who told him that story nearly twenty years ago had dated one of my friends and was at the party where I did the absurd things in question. Small world!
There’s no lesson here. (Except maybe, “Reputation is a wild animal you don’t control once released?”) But I laughed and laughed. My father would be pleased.
The Opportunity Machine 