People I Have Known

My reunion last weekend got me thinking about all the people I've known over the years. Have you ever stopped to think about the sheer number of people whom you've shared your life with?

As I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep, I thought about the process of writing down something about every person I've ever known. It'd be a long list -- I remember the names of a surprising number of kids from school and college, probably into the several hundreds (my graduating class was 514, and I knew more than half of them, plus kids from other grades, college dorms...)

Of course, it's been done before -- there's a couple of people who have posted their lists online. What had me kind of interested in the idea was not just to make a list, but to record things about each person, everything from just descriptions of them to anecdotes to longer stories and beyond.

For instance, I remember back in my old neighborhood in Lake Zurich, there was a kid named Jason who lived nearby for about two years. When he came over to introduce himself to my friends and me, we got in an argument and I punched him in the kidney and got in trouble, but we became good friends after that. I remember one of his older sisters' legs were growing too fast so the doctors put braces on them; she had to kind of swing down stairs because she couldn't bend her knees well. Later, when they moved away, Jason gave me all his comic books, two big boxes of them. I gave them away slowly to two older boys for a nickel each; the only one I still had was a coverless Star Wars comic where Luke is on a desert planet with sand worms (maybe a S.W.-Dune crossover?).

I could easily fill a few books with stuff like that. And it would be far more than just a collection of bits and pieces about other people -- it would be a reflection of who I am, the person I've been over the years. My interests, my tastes, my life would be mapped out in the details of a thousand people.

Wow. Now all I have to do is get started.

Posted by Andrew Huff at October 9, 2003 03:08 PM