The 50% principle

I'm back in Texas for the weekend -- just to spend a few days in a warm place, truth be told -- and I had the chance to visit with an old friend, former teacher, and one-time colleague of mine, CW. Altogether I've known her for 17 years, meaning that if you picked a moment at random out of the 30 years that I've been alive, chances are I'd have known her then. There's something special about friends you can say that about, friends you've known greater than half your life, be you a year old or a hundred. Call it the 50% principle.

I try to call CW at least once or twice a year and visit her whenever I'm here in Texas and school is in session. That usually works out to once every three or four years. This time around, I was lucky enough to have one of those chances.

Stepping into the old high school this afternoon, all the feelings I've associated with this place come rushing back as if someone were riffing through a flip book in my head. The times I was a student here, between 1990 and 1994. The year I taught algebra here, 2000-2001. Even the times before I ever stepped foot in this building -- growing up a mile behind the school, I'd hear the band practicing early on humid fall mornings when my mom would open the patio door to let the air in. And then that bittersweet day in the spring of 2001 when I packed away my teaching materials for possibly the last time, took down my posters, and turned out the lights and closed the door on my classroom -- my classroom.

I don't regret leaving the classroom -- I had to get on with my own schooling, after all -- but I'd regret not being able to teach again in some capacity and never feeling that satisfaction that comes with closing the circle.

I've known this for some time now, but it became especially clear as I was talking with CW this afternoon. I guess that's one benefit to having friends on the 50% principle: They've known you long enough to serve as mirrors in which you see your past selves. You see your present self as well, and if all goes well, the best of your future selves too.

As CW and I walked out to her car so she could give me a ride home, I turned back to snap a picture.


I didn't want to forget.