Why I leave people alone

I stumbled upon some of my old junior high school yearbooks online. Looked at them. Became depressed. The kids look so young to me now and the horrible things than happened to some of them seem far worse. At least two died of overdoses, one suicide that I know of, there was the kid whose mother died after a long illness whose father then committed suicide. It went on and on.

There was a kid whose first year of junior high was my last. He was small for his age and seemed funny and outgoing. His father was a hippie. A lot of people knew who the kid was but they all seemed to dislike him. I never spoke to him. Now, more than forty years later, I thought maybe I should have been a nice guy, like I should have befriended him. Poor tiny kid.

You know, Art Garfunkel befriended Paul Simon because he felt sorry for him for being so short.

I googled the kid's name. I hoped he hadn't come to some terrible end.

No, he's doing great. I read an interview with him in a magazine. He makes custom pool cues and is very well known in the custom pool cue community and apparently makes a pretty good living. Those things are expensive.

It turns out that he took woodshop in high school, worked some in construction and worked some as a carpenter and did other wood work. Then he really got into playing pool.

All these things converged to put him in the business he's in today. If even one element had been left out, who knows what he would be doing now.

And if I had been friends with him I would have tried to talk him out of every one of those things, or at least I wouldn't have shown any enthusiasm. If I had had the slightest influence over him, I would have ruined his life.

He's really tall now, by the way.