By Alaina Buckenroth and Angelo Gasbarre
Have you ever had an encounter with someone that led to you both discovering that you knew each other before that moment? Well, that happened to me and a fellow classmate just a few weeks ago. Below is a video of us recounting the exact moment we found out we were in a summer theatre group together as kids.
After this moment we shared in Journalism, our professor Marc Pietrzykowski shared a story of when he had a similar experience with someone. He told us of a time when he was younger and was playing street hockey with some friends when he shot a puck into the face of one of the players. Remembering that moment for years, he recalls,
“About 13 or 14 years later, I met up with friends, and a few people I did not know, in a park. One of the people I did not know had a scar on his chin, and I asked him how he got it, and he described the scene where I hit him with the puck. I asked if this happened on X street, and in what month, and his eyes narrowed, and he said that he thought I looked familiar. We were friends after that, actually.”-Marc P.
In Alaina’s contemporary literature class, a classmate told a story of her encounter with someone she knew once and met again at a party. She told the class about a house party she went to with local kids in her high school district, a very secluded group who often doesn’t invite kids from other schools. A guy came up to her at the party and asked if her dad was so-and-so. Reluctantly, she said yes and asked why. He told her that their dads used to be good friends who wrestled together, and as kids they would often hangout too when the dads would get together. She asked his last name and immediately knew who it was. When asked how she felt in that moment, she said,
“God, I hate this city, because everyone knows everyone, and I can’t go anywhere without bumping into someone my sister knew or my parents knew. We’ve been here for so long, and since I’m the youngest everyone established their relationships first.” Izzy C.
We talked to Angelo’s friend Kyle about how you never forget your first few good friends, and he told us a fascinating story about trying to reconnect with his old buddies when he got older.
“So basically, when I was 7 or 8 years old, I used to live in the deep suburbs of West Seneca. I had about 3 or 4 really close friends when I lived there about 4 years. Then my parents got divorced, so that sent me into South Buffalo. Afterwards of that it, been like 8 or 9 years since I’ve seen most of my friends that lived in that neighborhood. A couple years back, I decided to take a bike ride down there, ya know, knock on the doors see if anyone still lived there. One of them actually did. I knocked on the door and his mom answered. She surprisingly recognized me even though it had been well over a decade. Then after that, I asked, “Is he home?,” my friend‘s name is Evan by the way, and he came down we did the whole, “Holy sh*t it’s you, you’re huge now,” all that type of stuff… So after that it just kind of beautifully blossomed into a great friendship. Ya know, we were always really close friends before that, but we really just got to talking again. I’m really into Star Wars, he’s really into Star Wars and then yeah we’ve been talking ever since. He’s like one of my closest friends, we’re wrapped around each other’s fingers, I love that man-” Kyle T.
Hearing these stories made us realize and appreciate how important it is to not burn bridges. It was nice to meet each other for a second time and reminisce about things we had forgotten about. A piece of our childhood has been rekindled, and we’ll have this story to tell for many years to come.