An Unexpected Reunion

Over the last few months, I have spent a lot of time digging through old memories, in my head, in boxes and all the usual places we keep the artifacts of our life.  Recently I found two pieces of paper from 1982, one was covered with my scribbling and the other was a cleanly typed copy of those scribblings carefully transferred onto paper one letter at a time.  No word processor.  No spell checker.  No delete key.  Just a teenager sitting in front of what I am pretty sure was an IBM Selectric typewriter, trying to get his thoughts in order before committing them to paper.

The typed page had a simple title, A FRIEND. 

As I have worked my way through boxes of my childhood, I have found all sorts of things.  Embarrassing pictures, yeah I had a perm once.  Yearbooks with words from childhood friends, some that endure to this day.  Old report cards that did not show my potential.  Notes, good and bad, from teachers, and administrators.  Pictures of Grandparents who have been gone many years now.  A few things made me smile. A few things made me cringe.  Some things simply did not age well.  That is probably true of all of us if we have been on this journey long enough.

When I bumped into that typed page, I was expecting more of the same.  I could not have been more wrong.  It was quite a surprise.  As I read through it I was not struck by the writing itself.  What struck me was the person who wrote it.  I came face to face with the man I am today.  The page was my attempt, at 17 years old, to define who I should be as a friend, and what I needed a friend to be for me.  Buried there in the yellowing piece of paper were lines like, “someone who listens to what you’re really saying” and “someone who will consider your different beliefs, without judgment”, and “someone you can depend on, anywhere, anytime, for anything”.

What really caught me off guard was realizing those ideas didn’t come from experience, I didn’t have any.  I had not served in the Navy, I had not built a career, I had not led teams.  I had not loved and lost, I had not accumulated the life lessons that usually get credit for shaping who we are.  Yet there they were, sitting on the page in black ink.   A teenager writing about trust, without calling it trust, acceptance without calling it acceptance, and dependability without calling it dependability.  Somehow those values were already present long before I had enough life under my belt to explain where they came from.

The older I get, the less certain I am that life creates our values.  Life most assuredly tests the shit out of them.  It also challenges and beats them pretty hard.  Eventually life refines them, a polishing maybe.  But looking at that page, I found myself wondering if some of our most important values arrive earlier than we realize.  Maybe life doesn’t build them as much as simply revealing them to you over time.

I have been writing a lot about memories lately.  Most of the things I have uncovered have reminded me of Sandy.  Pictures, notes, little reminders of the life we cobbled together.  This find was different.  This one reminded me of me.  Reading that page felt a little like opening a time capsule.  Not because it showed me who I used to be, but because it showed me how long these values have been riding along with me.    

I am undeniably different from the 17 year old who typed those words.  Between then and now there was the Navy, a career in broadcasting, leadership roles, marriage, loss, success, mistakes, lessons, and experiences that that kid could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.  I am different in countless ways, but apparently, not in every way. 

There are values that have endured through every version of Smitty that has existed over my life.  They showed up as a young sailor.  They showed up as a small business owner.  They showed up when I was learning to be a broadcast engineer.  They showed up during my years with Bride.  They show up today in my role as Chief Technology Officer.  They show up in my friendships and they show up in my writing.  That is a lot of different versions of Smitty. 

Don’t get me wrong, 17 year old Smitty was fully capable of making bad decisions, I’d even say I was quite adept at it.  Those report cards from the same boxes can testify to that.  He had PLENTY to learn and more than a few rough edges.  Mostly it was the dumbassedness that comes with youth. Looking back now though, I can see that he already had a pretty clear idea of what kind of person he wanted to become.  Life added experience, success, failure, heartbreak, responsibility and a few more grey hairs than I want, but the compass heading was spot on.

Turns out, they have all been running on a firmware version that was installed a long time ago.  Many of us spend our lives wondering who we used to be.  This week, I got an unexpected answer to that question, and a realization that the firmware is at the root of who I am.  I found a handwritten draft and a typed page from 1982.  For a few minutes, across forty four years, I got to meet that young man again, and that was pretty damn cool. 

Turns out I was not reading something written by a teenager.  I was reading the first documented version of the firmware that I’m still running. 

And I keep coming back to the same question - if 17 year old me already knew trust, acceptance, listening, and dependability were that important, how much of who I am today was already there, in the black ink on a piece of paper from 1982.