Too Coincidental

The old General Foods headquarters in Rye Brook, NY

Life is weird. But you knew that already.

Social media has made our small world even smaller.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's go back in time...

Once upon a time, I was an idiot. Oh, wait. You knew that also.

I didn't plan to go away to school. I decided I wasn't ready to do that, so I'd stay local and attend Westchester Community College. Nope, it's not Harvard, but I got my first degree there, and there was a lot of hard work and sadness and triumph in all of that.

There's a longer story in there, but it's for another time. Still, some of it is pertinent to our tale today.

After a year of full-time school, I was essentially told that I needed a full-time job. So I switched what I did in my freshman year, going from full-time school/part-time work to the exact opposite.

Through my neighbor, I got a job in the mailroom of General Foods, at the large spaceship-looking building on the side of Interstate 287 in Rye Brook, NY.

I was there just about a year when a few things happened: first, I applied for a finance job (which had nothing to do with radio, of course). Second, my father died. Third, just after returning to work following his funeral, I found out I got that job, which I was told was unusual because most people in the mailroom take a little longer to get promoted.

I moved from the Rye Brook building over to 250 North Street in White Plains in April 1989.

Anyway, I'm babbling. I eventually worked for a man named John Hepburn. He became a bit of a mentor for this radio-loving Yankees fan that hung around his office a lot and drove him fairly crazy. We played softball, had occasional lunches, and so on in the happy culture that was General...er...Kraft General...er...Kraft Foods of the 1990s.

Eventually, we were all laid off, with me saluting my coworkers on WREF Radio in Dec 1996.

John wasn't much for such sentimentality. At least not publicly. I wrote him a letter (through the MAIL!) in 1997 when I became a manager at my next gig, looking for advice and to catch up.

It went unanswered.

I'd think of him from time to time.

Then came today.

I was on Facebook, of course, looking at something related to the Jets when I noticed a comment from a Katie Hepburn. John (and his wife, Eileen) had a daughter named Katie who used to hang out with me when she'd visit her dad at the office. Nah. Too coincidental.

Obviously, I'm giving up the mystery here.

I scrolled through her Facebook page. There it was: just one picture from a Father's Day of Katie posing with her dad years ago.

Through more digging, I discovered a variety of things about John and Katie. I found out Eileen had died and that John had remarried and, at least in the pictures that I saw with his second wife, looks very happy.

It's still John, but the hair is whiter. He looks great, and could probably get a few more hits on the softball field if his knees would hold up.

I'm sure he still lives and dies with the Jets and Mets.

So, what does one do with this? Sure -- message Katie and ask if she remembers me or write to his second wife and tell her all of this? All of that is in play, I guess.

Then, at the same time, I can't help but wonder if people are content to let these things go for a reason.

Just like Frank Viggiano, as I wrote back in April.

So, as of right now, I'm content to see who and what Katie has become, and see the joy in John's face. I can love my old friends from afar.

And flashback to days when I was young, immature, headstrong, and dumb.

And innocent.

The end of the innocence happened a long time ago and that's a whole different topic.