An old friend from ten years ago found me just the other day via the Internet. Interestingly enough, he was a hitchhiker I met on my way driving back to St. Louis after a weekend away. He was 16 at the time, and when I stopped I just rolled down the window a tiny bit to ask him where he was going and if he was a safe person to give a ride to. He answered in this thick Canadian accent, “Of course I won't harm you, I'm safe I promise.” After hearing his voice, which was amusingly proper, I immediately trusted him and let him in. He was beaming with harmlessness.
It was only a 25 minute drive to St Louis and I told him that was as far as I was going. He then asked politely, yet quite fearlessly if he could "crash" for the night on my couch. I didn't mind, and he didn’t seem weird in any way so I said yes. He was a very polite guest, but needed a shower. I let him get cleaned up and talked with him for a while. He'd been on the road three days since leaving Sudbury, Ontario. I was impressed in his timing. He had a full beard, so he didn't look his age at all. Plus he was a big guy. He'd left his High School, and was agonizing with guilt over the Shakespearean play he was director of. He was worried that his classmates would be cross with him. Something in me just knew that he was a really great guy.
I've always loved Canadians since meeting him, and have thought of him so often since he left. He came back to St. Louis two weeks after he left for Chicago I think, and we spent the day together. I wasn't in town when he arrived so I hid my key for him. I got home and he was there. It was the early afternoon so we went to a park. While there he climbed a tree and attached the watch I gave him to a tree limb high up in this tree. He'd been wearing it for about two weeks and decided time was a farce. That watch is probably grown a part of the tree by now. I also gave him my book, The Prophet, and a silver dollar my dad had given me. We lay on our bellies in the sunshine, playing with the water in the pond we were laying by, at Tower Grove Park and talked. On that day we made ourselves honorary brother and sister.
So he finds me, and he's living in Taiwan teaching English. He sent me pictures, and told me how all these years he's tried to find me, and that I was this special person to him, “One of the few...” He looks so different now! He’s very handsome and very trimmed down. He freaked out on how different I looked too, because when I met him my hair was shorter and black. This happened just last Monday. It's amazing the people who touch our lives though our journey called living. I’m just glad he’s okay. Hilariously enough, he’s only a year younger than my husband is.
Go ahead and send the letter.
