While northwest Ohio is currently suffering an enormous brain drain, there's always one (or two) occasions during which most of the city's sons and daughters return for a celebration of our fatherland, or at least our fathers and mothers. Inevitably, one or more nights will be spent in the close quarters of Rickety Rick's, the town watering hole (I leave out the Town Tap, featuring even closer quarters, for the sake of brevity).
Here at Rick's, the alumni of Napoleon High School can be found in various conditions, with clothing choices reflecting where we've all gone in our new lives far from home; the professionals now involved with the law or finance in natty turtlenecks or cable-knit sweaters, the teachers in hooded sweatshirts emblazoned with the name of some distant high school, and the military men and women in t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to the Air Force, Army, or Merchant Marines. (The latter being extremely rare).
Two nights before Christmas 2005, I found myself leaning against the bar, talking to a fellow member of the Class of '96 who was among the few that failed to escape the event horizon of Napoleon, a gentleman who spends his days in the noble profession of carpentry. It was then I saw the closely-cropped dark hair and round glasses of a guy two years my senior, a man who was very close friends with my very close friend Bethany.
I ended up talking to him a half hour, and learning all about his new life in Geneva, Switzerland, as a finance consultant for expat Americans. I left fascinated by his career and with an open invitation to visit and go skiing.
Fast forward to today.
In the shadow of today's Switzerland 2 Togo 0 World Cup match, I received an IM from someone very, very close to me, an individual currently working a summer internship in Switzerland for the State Department. I've not heard from her since she left two months ago, and have been curious as hell to know how she's been doing -- I was even thinking of her only this morning, as I went to class.
The IM was one line, and basically referred to the fact she'd met a guy who I went to high school with who mentioned he was on my Little League team.
Go Switzerland.
Leave a comment