What Goes Around Comes Around

This phrase usually carries a negative connotation to suggest that our past sins will come back to haunt us or sneak up to pounce on us from behind. In light of recent happenings in my life, a new meaning is making me revise my understanding of this saying.

Last week-end, I was reunited with a classmate from my adolescent past, thanks to the magic of Facebook. Actually, this friend was looking for Phil, hoping that my last name meant I was now married to his old friend. As we corresponded through Facebook, and I looked up his photograph in the high school yearbook that I keep next to my computer, I remembered this guy, although rather fuzzily. I recalled that he had dated my best friend, who was very popular and outgoing, and maybe that was the association. It couldn’t have been through Phil, because during those days we were church youth group buddies and not even attending the same school, and we spent more time picking at each other at church activities than anything else. Besides, after moving from Decatur, I didn’t see or hear from Phil for over twenty years.

When I mentioned this guy’s name to Phil, his face lit up, and he immediately began telling me stories about his youth and young adult days and how this new person, now my Facebook Friend, and he had become fast friends. I was so curious, I could hardly stand it. The two of them met for breakfast within the week, and then we invited him over to our house for dinner on Sunday.

This is not the only old friend I have caught up with through Facebook, but this is one who had a connection with both Phil and me, although separately. After a delightful dinner on Sunday evening sitting at our kitchen table, we three knew that several decades had evaporated before our eyes as memories of high school and beyond bubbled to the surface and the links became stronger.

As I look back at my teen-age years, I see myself as a shy girl, who was often considered a snob. It wasn’t that I wasn’t friendly, but that I was very unsure of myself, and as a result I was wrapped up in how I looked, what I wore, and what activities I was involved in. Sometimes I think that I missed out on a lot, just because I was so very self-absorbed. I never knew that this particular person, now back in my life, remembered me or knew who I was. Then yesterday, I got a huge surprise. He called me on the phone and asked me if the town of Safety Harbor meant anything to me. It had popped into his mind after our dinner together. Of course it did - that was the town we moved to when we left Decatur. He said that he remembered writing letters to me after I moved. Searching my memory, I vaguely remember this, as well. There were a few Decatur people who kept up with me for a short time, with whom I corresponded for awhile, and it had meant a lot to me in those lonely days in a new place.

It makes me pause to think. Maybe I wasn’t such a snob after all, if a teen-age boy thought enough of me to write letters to me after I moved from the town that was home to me. It also brings to mind “what goes around comes around.” Those connections we made as kids are still out there, just waiting for the opportunity to jump up and surprise us.

But it’s in a good way.