I am number 4-0-4-4.
Wake up, 6 AM. Crawl out of bed, grab a pop tart, go.
It’s cold and drizzling. The bus is late but it arrives, packed. You sardine yourself into the tin can. Smell included.
Get off in a mob approaching a depression-era building, a black spiked gate around its perimeter. You’re not sure if the gate is meant to keep people in or out.
Wait in line, another crowd in the cold drizzle. You finally make it in the building.
Once inside, a key pad sits in front of the CRT monitor – type in 4-0-4-4. It accepts you with a green block on the screen, and you can move forward.
A metal detector and an x-ray machine for your bag. Your zipper triggers the detector and you get shoved to the side, to wait in a third line and be wanded down by a pushy security guard.
Welcome to school.
To me, James Madison wasn’t the High School that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Judge Judy attended, it was a four year incarceration. With a few exceptions.
Exception 1 – Masterlock Code 9-11-21.
I remember this code because it was a year after 9/11, and I found it spooky to be my locker code. As did my locker partner Gary.
Because our Depression-era school was a few thousand students over capacity, every locker was shared by two people. It was a no-brainer for Gary and I to partner. We were close and had been friends since Junior High. He got me into comic books and some great video games. We were two scrawny nerds in gym class.
We lost touch after high school. 15 years would pass before I would see Gary again. In the years before reconnecting, I would occasionally find an old Battle Chasers comic book and think of the friend that introduced me to it.
15 years passed. At this point I had discovered the inside of a gym. Several gyms, in fact. Working out became a new part of my identity.
I had just moved to Manhattan and joined one of those fancy gyms. The kind that had clean equipment and towels. One morning at that gym – to my surprise – I saw a familiar face on the leg press.
“Gary?” I called out and hurried over.
“Gary it’s me, Vlad!” I said, like a puppy reunited with its owner.
He looked up. “Oh, hey Vlad.” He said, with no excitement.
“How the hell are you man!?” I asked.
“I’m good, thanks.” He said, with a trailing dead space. No ‘how are you,’ no ‘good to see you.’
I tried to keep talking, to engage with my old friend. But his one word answers and visible discomfort said more than words could. He had no interest in catching up, or reconnecting, or whatever it was that I thought would happen.
To this day I have no idea if I did something wrong. Maybe something I said at the tail-end of our high school days. Or maybe, unlike me, he was okay to leave the past in the past.
Up until The Pandemic, I would occasionally see him at the gym, but our interactions were limited to a slight wave or head nod.
Bear with me – this story has a happy ending. But first, the pandemic.
The Pandemic started and there were no more gyms. I was lucky that I owned some dumbbells to workout, and had my old classical guitar to stay sane. While I hadn’t seriously played guitar since High School, it became an escape during quarantine.
Rewind back to James Madison High School. The school that gave us Bernie Sanders and Chris Rock.
And the lasting gift that it gave me: the guitar.
Just past the security check-in, where code 4-0-4-4 got me through the door, a different set of digits represented escape.
That code was A440. The orchestral standard for tuning instruments, including the classical guitar. Middle A to 440 hz. I would come into guitar class before the first period and help tune all 20 Yamahas for Mr Miller.
Mr Miller, the guitar teacher. A tall, slender man, with white hair and a fatherly warmth. He rode to school on a bicycle, tucking his right corduroy pant-leg into his sock so it wouldn’t catch on the chain. He was kind,
He gave me a place to hang out during breaks between classes, to hide from a school I didn’t care for. And in exchange I helped tune guitars, tidy the room and tutor the occasional beginner.
Like Gary, Mr Miller will always hold a happy place in my memory. And like Gary, I lost touch with him after High School. During The Pandemic, the thought of reconnecting crossed my mind.
I’d reached out a few years ago on Facebook, but he didn’t reply then. Perhaps, like Gary, he wanted to keep the past in the past. Or worse, he just didn’t remember me. After a few weeks of thinking about it, I figured it was worth a shot. I found an email for him online and fired it off.
A few days later, a familiar name @ aol.com popped into my inbox.
And quite unlike Gary, Mr Miller was thrilled that I reached out. He just retired and would be happy to grab a beer one day. I thanked him for the gift of the guitar, and told him that my wife and I had a mini musician on the way.
A few weeks later, rolling in on his bike with his corduroy pant leg tucked into a sock, was Mr Miller. It was surreal catching up on 20 years of happenings, school gossip, life. We remembered old classmates and had that beer on a beautiful sunny day.
The highlight of this story came a few months later. After baby Stella arrived, Mr Miller came over for another jam session. In a full circle moment of perfection, he sat with his guitar and sang a song, like I’d watched him do hundreds of times in the old days. But this time he was singing to my little girl.
Sometimes, reconnecting with an old friend is a reminder that the past is best left in the past. But sometimes, reaching out gives life its poetry.
PS – reach out and thank someone that added poetry to your life. It might change both of your lives again. If nothing else, it’ll feel great.
PPS – listen to my new podcast!
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