Kathy

I spent a good deal of yesterday and just a tiny bit of today in the Middle Ages. Now, I don't mean that I was actually back in the Middle Ages, if I could do that kind of traveling I think I would go somewhere that "The Black Death" wasn't such a big part of the culture. I have always tried to avoid conversations with people that start with "Did you have to toss any loved ones in the gutter for collection today?" No, generally speaking I would avoid places and times that are noted for painful death, rats and undervaluing human life. No wars or dinosaurs for me. You can forget about going on a cruise with any of the great explorers too.

If I could go back in time I think I would go and order a dining room set from a certain carpenter and his son that lived about 2000 years ago in Galilee. It would be kind of cool to watch the first flight of the Kitty Hawk or to listen to Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs the day they found their first computer. I'd like to get to laugh with my mom and dad before two kids had beaten them down and made them parents. I would try to talk some sense into the younger Kenny H and tell him that it is okay for him to be smart and to excel at things. I would definitely buy gold when it was $35 an ounce.

No, yesterday I was stuck without access to the internet. We went to visit our friend Kathy in Kitchener who is a very nice person in most respects, but when I pulled out my laptop and asked her for the password to her internet, she told me that it might not be possible. Kathy was willing to give me the password, but she has an extra layer or two of security on her internet. It seems that she was worried that she was supplying free internet to the complex she lives in and in order to stop that, or the possibility, she had a net wizard make that impossible. When she called her wizard, he asked if I knew some incomprehensible secret address of my laptop. Might as well have asked if I were able to shove a lump of coal up my butt and make a diamond. So, no internet access.

This must have been what it was like in the old days before electricity, education, polio vaccines and television. I actually remember not being connected to the world and it wasn't so bad because everyone was in the same boat. We all had nothing to do other than talk to each other and in moments of extreme insanity, we would break out the monopoly board and start what would become a week or two long game.

Last night, we talked to each other and left the Monopoly board buried under the debris in the basement. The thing about true friends is that they can go years without seeing each other and the moment they get together, smiles grow on their faces and they will pick up the conversation that began five years previously. We talked and laughed, did the "remember when", caught up on work, retirement, kids and grandkids. We talked politics, the future, the future of politics, floods, corruption and a lot of frivolous things too numerous to mention.

Far too soon the hands of the clock told us that the night was over. We all had hoped that time would slow down and the night would just go on and on. None of us have that kind of control, so we trooped upstairs and were soon asleep. In the morning, we had coffee and breakfast together before Kathy had to go to work. As she walked out the door, I knew that whether it was five days or five years before we talked again,it will be a comfortable and pleasant time.

Thanks for the memories both new and old.