Cheryl Mendoza

I was not sure why I looked, but I did.  It may be because it is fall.  I know, most people just get a pumpkin spice latte, but not me.  I become nostalgic.  It might have been because yesterday was such a sucky day.  I slept badly, and did not write till late in the afternoon.  Which means that all the crap that makes my head, spin was not written out and discarded.  It just kept rolling around in my mind till it was ready to burst.  Yesterday afternoon though, I was able to get out, grab some chai and “throw up” for lack of a better term.  I just write down everything in my head and see if I can use any of what is there.

For some reason this morning, I did not go back to it.  I was feeling nostalgic again and so I did look up some information on my elementary school.  I was trying to picture people and some of the things that shape my memories.  It was then that I looked.  In this day and age of the internet you can find just about anyone, or at least some bit of an electronic trace.  So during childhood I had many friends on and off, and I still keep in touch with a few.  There is one though, that I truly lost touch with. We met during elementary school, continued through Junior high and into the beginning of high school. At some point, we grew apart?

Today for some reason, I Googled her name.  OK, so I looked her up through Yahoo, whatever!  When her name
came up, so did a lot of pictures.  Some were of other people, but then I saw her face.  Older, with darker hair but beautiful.  I looked into the face of a person that I remember with fondness, I looked into the face of a person that I loved.  Now get your minds out of the gutter, not that kind of love.   The kind of love you have for a family member that, even though you haven’t seen them for a while, you feel like they had never left your side.

So what do you do when you find someone on the internet?  You of course cyber stalk them.  Do not get the wrong idea, I was not going to camp out at her house or anything.  I went and looked in the usual places for information, FaceBook and Twitter.  I looked for pictures of her, of her family, any information as to where she lived and what she was doing after all these years.  It was exciting to see that she is an actress.  It was something that made sense, in relation to the girl I once knew.  I guess the tap, jazz, acrobat and Hawaiian dance lessons had paid off for her.  I always laughed when she went through the litany of dance classes she had taken, and even with what I listed, I am probably still missing some of them.  As you can imagine, I was a more than a little envious of her training.

It makes me happy to know that she is well.  I remember long conversations when we were younger, but I don’t remember the details.  I cannot put my finger on the why, all I know is what my heart tells me.  All I know is that finding out this new information, is like a piece of a puzzle.  It all seems to fit.   I love fall and the thoughts of old friends.