Past lives

January 3, 2009 at 7:23 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Wow. My college friends are slowly creeping onto Facebook. I can’t believe how many old friends I’ve found, that I haven’t heard from in ages.

Those are the people who knew me When. Back before I developed the mostly bulletproof professional facade that I now inhabit most of the time. Those people can tell you some interesting stories about me. But then again, I can tell you some stories about them that are at least as interesting as anything I ever did.

I have never been the craziest person in my group. Whatever the group norms are, I generally stay within them. But back then I hung around with some pretty wild people, none of whom were pre-med, and I definitely had more fun in college than the vast majority of physicians I know. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I could lead a totally joyless life for the remainder of my existence, and I would still have had more fun, over all, than most of my current colleagues. Frankly, it’s a miracle that I ever finished college.

To give you some idea, the latest friend I’ve run across was affectionately known to all of us as Dave From Hell. The name was so universally used that some people didn’t even know his real last name. He was in ROTC, and eventually became the Battalion Commander for the school, and went on to become a green beret/SEAL/whatever the elite combat group was for his branch of the service. That was the kind of guy he was. And he was a good friend of mine. We lost touch after he graduated, but apparently he is still in touch with some other good friends of mine that I didn’t lose touch with.

So lately, there’s been a parade of friends and exes, friends of exes, exes of friends, and assorted others from the complicated web of people I knew in college, showing up on Facebook. It’s kind of cool to get in touch with all of them again, and remember that medicine isn’t all there is to my life.