WEIRD FORMER BOY

This morning’s email was it. I just had to blog about Ichabod, a man I knew when he was a boy in my class. I’m calling him Ichabod only because there were no Ichabods in my high school.

I hadn’t been in touch with Ichabod since graduation. And not much even before that. We traveled in different cliques. He was a popular jock who dated cheerleaders. I would have loved to have been a cheerleader. Only I didn’t make the squad. Instead I settled for writing a feature column in the weekly school paper, among other fun extra-curricular activities which paled in my teenaged brain to wearing a short skirt and jumping around in front of crowds.

Ichabod, to my surprise, left a nice note to me on Classmates.com. So I wrote back and a flurry of email ensued. At first they were fun and interesting. He, like me, is single although living on the other side of the country. And I induced him to become active on Facebook and post his photo. I tried to talk him into playing Lexulous, Facebook’s version of Scrabble, long distance with me.

Ichabod sent me a photo of himself standing before an array of paintings, two of which seemed possibly to be of Christ and the others were more along the lines of Elvis on velvet. That he was no longer the tall skinny boy with the luxuriant head of hair wasn’t surprising, although he’s still tall. And while his looks didn’t put me off, the little gallery behind him gave me pause.

And then things became really weird. He wrote that I should see the condo he was in (without explanation of being a different place). And in all caps he screamed “I have a custom coffee grinder & and ice cream scooper!!”

But that wasn’t the end of the strangeness. He attached a photo entitled “Bavarian” to download. Up came an out-of-focus image of Ichabod and some woman. They seemed happy and nowhere near Bavaria. Unless Bavaria is now near the Equator. Who was she? I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were his mother rather than the girlfriend it turned out to be.

He had asked about a photo in my Facebook album. (I repeat, in my Facebook album, not a photo I sent him.) Who, he inquired, was the gentleman in the beard? “An ex-boyfriend with whom I’ve remained friendly.” Ichabod’s reaction was that we made a handsome couple. “I’m sure his wife would be ever so pleased” was my sardonic reply. Except mails don’t convey tone very well. And I’m not big on emoticons.

Then Facebook upset him. Help! he emailed. People were contacting him! So I explained how to control what would pop up on one's page. But it was all too much for him, I guess and he became my first and only Facebook friend to quit. I didn’t even get a game of Lexulous out of it! So he’s gone from Facebook and I doubt that he tweets. But the good news is that he’s not apt to find out about this.

My responses to his unusual missives became short and apparently didn’t encourage correspondence which mercifully slowed to a trickle. So I hadn’t heard from him in a while until this morning. Prompted by the death of Patrick Swayze, Ichabod was moved to write this: “Just so sad….I am so sad.”

I wouldn’t have taken Ichabod to be a big fan of Dirty Dancing or Ghost. Weren’t those chick flicks?

I don’t know. He seemed so normal in school. I never would have imagined that Ichabod would turn out to be so weird.

Well, I have to go now. I have to figure out some sort of reply to Ichabod. Consoling words, I guess. It might take the rest of the morning to come up with something.