For some reason, lately I’ve been fascinated with digging up as much stuff from my past as I can. I’ve imported all my Facebook, MySpace and old Word journal entries and even found some old e-mails in my Yahoo! Mail account from 2003 which I was particularly happy to have found since there was info in the messages I found which I hadn’t documented anywhere else! Frank said (yes, babe, you made it into an entry!) the other day that I am all about documentation these days. I guess I am. I dunno.
I have always been a person who wants to remember people and things and experiences as long as possible. The weird part of that is that I also frequently forget stuff that I did, said or that happened. My mom’s always saying “you don’t remember anything!” And, Manon has said similar things before, too. At any rate, it’s not uncommon for me to look up people I knew, was friends with, worked with, etc. and just phone them up or email them after a crazy amount of time has passed, the most recent being my -mail to Mrs. Wray, which has not yet been answered (not even sure that was her correct e-mail address, though…will call the school tomorrow to confirm).
Sometime last year (I think it was), I decided I wanted to contact Rhonda Dunn who I had worked with at Marchand’s back in 1995 or so. I called the few Dunns in the phone listings for Gonzales and ended up talking to her mom. I told her that I’m sure she’d think I was nuts but that I had worked with Rhonda and was thinking about her and wanted to try to get in touch with her. She gave me her number and I phoned her up and we talked for a couple of hours. Totally weird! Contrary to what I would have believed about Rhonda – she was into the band Rancid when we worked together and was sort of a punk girl – she’s married with several kids and is totally into church and family and stuff.
A similar thing happened probably in 2005 when I looked up Noelle Holmes who I had worked with at Michael’s and then at Lagniappe. She and her husband Jason moved away to somewhere out of Louisiana (can’t remember now) and I talked to her for a while, too. When I talked to her, she said she had been having problems with anxiety and stuff like that and I told her all about my issues with that when I was 22-23 in hopes that some of what I went through would be helpful to her.
For some reason, I decided to look up the Franklin family crest tonight, thinking if it was cool, maybe that could be fodder for the tattoo I want to get – I just want one more, something really good and beautiful and well-done this time! I am thinking of the outside of my left ankle – I want it somewhere I can see it for a change! So, I was reading info about Benjamin Franklin and it got me thinking about my family tree again. So, I pulled out the papers and started trying to find out about Ben’s siblings to actually confirm the relation my family claims! lol Then, I went to one of those genealogy web sites and looked up a few things and then it got me thinking about my grandfather, Herbert. I looked him up in the Social Security Death Index and found out his birthdate, deathdate, SSN and his last place of residence. Then, I was able to look up where he’s buried, since he was in the Air Force, and that told me what his rank was – TSgt which stands for Technical Sergeant. TOO COOL! So, I then found a link where I could request his military records as next of kin. I filled it out and said “Son”, but if anyone gives me any shit, I’ll just say I was requesting it for my dad because he IS the son! lol
Now, I just pulled out my old journals and am going to enter some of them in. I’m going to do my best to put them in in chronological order, but I may skip ahead to look at them all and see what’s in which one. Going to be interesting,if to no one else, at least to me!