On Friends and Regrets

I must apologize in advance for this post, as it is a little more serious than my previous entries and a bit on the depressing side.

This past weekend was my college class reunion (well I graduated in 1993, so technically it should have been next year, but the school likes to lump three different class years together, so it was this year). It got me thinking about a good friend of mine who passed away unexpectedly last December. His name was Jalal and he drowned in a snorkeling accident while on vaction in Thailand.

I don't know how it happened but when I went to St. Lawrence I somehow ended up in a section called International House, which contained most of the foreign students who were lured to the college with scholarships and shiny brochures. I-House (as it was known) was not only a cultural melting pot, but it also contained students from all different years (and kick ass rooms!!). Now just imagine me, a heavy metal lovin' nerd from a small town in upstate New York, where there were more cows than people (my graduating class was like 43 people), leaving home for the first time and ending up in this diverse, multicultural environment. Talk about a fish out of water. My freshman roomate was from India and about as opposite of me as possible. My half of the room was covered in movie and Iron Maiden posters, while his contained a large Indian flag.

Jalal was from Bangladesh (a country I would have had trouble finding on a map) and ended up being one of the first friends I made at college. Jalal was very down to earth and seemed to enjoy my stupid/quirky sense of humor. We joined the campus radio station together and had our own radio show for the first year. The Big J and J Show, it was called. I still have a couple of tapes that I have wanted to convert to MP3s, but I have no idea whether they still work. Besides that, I couldn't even tell you when I last owned a functioning tape player. I was looking over the music list from the shows and boy, the music doesn't exactly flow very well, but we had a lot of fun, and that is all that counts. In the years that followed I ended up getting my own show, The Mr. Excitement Show, which was terrible. Every other word out of my mouth was Uuum, and I was trying to do a whole Steven Wright, monotone thing. (I did get better... eventually.) It was on Saturday nights and I played songs from such classic groups as Poison, Warrant, Guns and Roses, Extreme, etc. (Though I did discover The Ramones, The Descendents and the Dead Kennedy's while there as well.) My big hair band phase turned to Punk. And you can also see what a party animal I was, seeming I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than sit in the basement and spin records (yes, we were still using records) for practically no audience. But anyways, I am getting side tracked.

Freshman year, when I heard that Jalal and my roomate Aranya had no where to go for Thanksgiving I invited them down to share the holiday with my family. My dad had come and picked us up and the ride, which usually took about three hours took even longer due to traffic and some really crappy weather.

It was a great visit and I enjoyed myself, though I often wonder what he thought of the tour of Argyle, NY and our little house in the woods. I had met up with some friends and we played some football. Jalal and Aranya did not join in, but instead wandered up to downtown, I believe. (Downtown consisted of a bank, gas station, hardware store and a grocery store.) I think Jalal would have played, but Aranya did not seem very interested, and I don't think he wanted to leave him out. But this is just speculation.

Jalal and I were also on the I-House intermural soccer team, which was not the best team in the league, but I don't think there was a team that had more fun than we did. I also remember a certain talent show that we had for I-House one year, where Jalal and I decided to sing Judas Priest's Ram it Down, a cappella. I don't even think we rehearsed it at all, just stood up and read the lyrics off of the tape's jacket. Now I must confess, I cannot sing to save my life, but love to do it. I have several Rock Band games for the Wii and love to rock the mic, but good lord, I pity anyone in earshot! If you believe in reincarnation, I must have been a great singer in a past life, but treated people like crap, because I can not imagine how someone can love to sing as much as I do and be so bad at it.

Another Jalal story I remember is from a time we went up to Canada for a field trip. Here is a picture and let me explain it.

First off, with the sweater I am wearing, it is probably pretty understandable why I didn't get my first girlfriend until Junior year of college. I say this because this was me "dressing up" for the trip. Jalal and I were posing for this picture when the guy on the left started to cut in front of the picture. I, being the idiot that I am, insisted he get in on the photo with us. Then, right before the picture was taken, I put my arms around him. Thus the guys reaction.

I remember many trips with Jalal and my I-House friends. Though I must admit, they probably saw my ass on way too many occasions. At the time, I thought mooning was the pinnacle of comedic expression and dropped my pants with the least provocation. I have many fine memories of Jalal and the time we shared at SLU, although we did find different groups of people to hang around with as the the years progressed.

Graduation came and we all went in different directions. I ended up keeping in touch with a few people, but for the most part, I lost touch with most of my old college friends. It didn't help that I ended up marrying a controlling evil bitch who didn't seem to want me to have anything to do with anybody but her, including my own family. Not that I am in any way blaming her for not calling, writing or e-mailing people, but my life was not going the direction I wanted, and I, like a lot of people, was wrapped up in my life.

But then came something that really changed everything, in terms of communicating with the friends that I had lost touch with: Facebook. Some people hate it, and refuse to join for various reasons. I, however, love it. Like most people, when I first joined I was a slave to FB. Between the time management games such as Mafia Wars, and the constant updating of my status (I was sure everyone really wanted to know that I was at home eating a roast beef sandwhich). I befriended a lot of my old college friends. I found out what some of them had been up to and sent some of them brief messages to catch up. With Jalal, unfortunately, I never did this. I would comment on a post of his every now and then, and I found out some of what was going on in his life. I saw he became an associate professor at University of Massachussetts Boston, got married and was doing some amazing things with his life (he even had a Wikipedia page about himself). But I never sent a message to reconnect.

That is the thing I think that upsets me the most, when I think back upon it. I kept saying to myself, "I'll send him a note one of these days." All in needed to do was just click on <create a new message> and type his name and then add a message like "Hey, I have thought of you often over the years, and was wondering how your life was going." That was it, and I never did it. And now he is gone and I will never get the opportunity. It is and will always be a big regret of mine. And regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. Sorry, went all Frank there for a minute. But it would have been such a simple thing to shoot out an email and I let the opportunity pass me by. So if there is any point to my ramblings here in this post, it is simply to beseach you not put things like this off. Life is way too short and too unpredictable. And Jalal, wherever you are, here is one more chorus for you...

Thousands of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air
We¹ve found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down, ram it down
Straight through the heart of this town
Ram it down, ram it down
Razing the place to the ground
Ram it down.