I graduated from high school over fifty years ago, and now somehow, I have been elected to the job of KTMC also known as Keeping Track of My Classmates. It’s not a bad job and I enjoy knowing where my former classmates have ended up, but sometimes I feel like I am herding cats. Nobody’s in jail, and that’s good. Some stayed in the immediate area while others have ventured far and wide. I liked my Emmett, Idaho, classmates in the early 1960s and I like them now. However, when I was 18, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the social part of high school because my only goal at 18 was to leave home. Field Marshall Von Emeline took no prisoners, and I wanted to get on with my life and had set my sights on college.
This week, I had a bit of writer’s block so decided to take a break and refresh my classmates’ addresses, emails, and phone numbers. Years ago, I organized them with an Excel spread sheet to diligently keep track of all this information, but recently I’ve needed to do a lot of sad updating as I had been notified of deaths more often than in the past. I did my revisions, hit send and off it went. (Let me say this: I am not an Excel aficionado, and especially not when I am sad; it deals with numbers and other details and is much too confusing, and I refuse to take a class. Besides that, my brain is already filled with useless information.)
Moments later, back it came. I had attached it incorrectly. What now?
I reattached and resent and within the next day or two, I got eighteen emails from people who couldn’t open it, and could I please save it in PDF or some other format? Of course, I’m a Marine and can do almost anything, but what in the world was a PDF and why wasn’t it noted in my Marine training manual? I brought in reinforcements: a former classmate and nice guy, Jim, who lives far away and has gotten me out of techno jams before. He kindly fixed it and resent it to me.
I thanked him profusely and reattached and once more hit send. Success, nothing came back, and I was home free, except that I missed a few changes in my classmate’s names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and several marriages. Again, my bad. I made the changes, but needed Jim’s help again, but couldn’t reach him, he was off to someplace and wouldn’t be back. I think he was avoiding me, but his talented wife Kathy, also a former classmate, fixed the document and now it’s been four days since I’ve heard from anyone. To be fair, my Internet has been cranky, so I haven’t really looked at my email this week. What surprises lurk for this KTMC?
It’s nice to have friends who can help me, and my position as KTMC is solid. So far, I haven’t been fired.
Please mask up, we’re getting close to the end, but it takes all of us.
If you enjoy Wrinkly Bits, please share!
