Tuesday, October 30, 2012

When you part with co-workers and leave for your next gig, you say your goodbyes, exchange your short-lived vows to “keep in touch,” and then you move on, relegating their names to the endless shelves of LinkedIn. That’s the norm for me, at least. But it doesn’t have to be, as I was reminded tonight. You can run smack into the past and pick up right where you left off–and in doing so, find it to be richly rewarding.

It was a chance encounter in the dairy section at Target, of all places. I ran into a colleague from yore and before I knew it, 40 minutes had flown by. It’s been more than two years since I worked with her, but conversation flowed as freely as if we were on lunch break, with stories, updates on people, new insights on old narratives. I realized these bonds never truly dissipate. There is a common vocabulary shaped by the psychological scars we endured together. It’s like I served with you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark corners of the corporate world, against a deluge of market forces entirely out of our control. It made my night.

I can’t say the same for tomorrow night, though. You know my stance on Halloween. No matter how much more sociable I’ve become, the core conceit of tomorrow’s holiday continues to be nonsensical and repugnant. Buying a bag or two of candy to distribute would be far less expensive than hitting the movie theater, but it’s not a question of cost. I simply don’t understand the mandate to be regularly summoned by my doorbell to fund the sugar dependencies of complete strangers, even for a day. I’ve prepped, of course, with my usual routine, ensuring my front porch is swept free of poisonous spiders and their authentic webbing and, most importantly, culpability.