I have two friends, Joe and Kevin, part of a group of Ohio University alumni who reconstituted online once the Internet ramped up about a decade after we graduated. Credit for that goes to another friend, Meg, who started a list serv to loosely knit us all together. We were people who--one way or another--hung out at OU's student union, whether it was working on student government, the school newspaper, the campus radio station, the events board...or tending bar at the Frontier Room campus pub.
Ah, the Frontier Room in May. This time of year, it would be empty, because everyone would be outside on the patio, enjoying the Appalachian spring. If you got there early, you could grab a seat on the brick walls on the corner of Union and College streets, hailing friends passing below who hadn't managed to leave their class schedule blank after 3 p.m. The Frontier Room was less than a hundred steps from The Post, where I spent most of my non-class time, but I am pretty sure I whiled away at least as many hours at the bar as I did at the office. They were good times, and I made lifelong friends.
I didn't know Kevin and Joe well while we were in school, and I can count on one hand the number of times we've seen each other in person since then. But each has enriched my online life in a significant way. Let me explain.
Back in 2013, when Kevin was awaiting a kidney transplant, he started making a Facebook post the first day of each month, always starting "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" for good luck and then sharing an update from his life. The posts "were just meant to help me recalibrate during the last years of dialysis, but I'm grateful others get something from them," he tells me. Kevin always includes some words of encouragement and, once in a while, a gentle admonition. Today, he asked us all to please wear our masks. "Millions like me have a compromised immune system," he wrote. "I've beat cancer twice, please don't kill me with your sneeze. Thanks." He ends each of these monthly posts with these words, "No day but today," from the finale of Rent.
Like me, Joe walks every day. (Actually, Joe says he has only missed two days of walking since 2010. I am in awe.) Joe averaged over five miles a day last year, and every morning on his return, he posts on Facebook. He gives the weather report from Central Ohio, logs the first six selections from his music shuffle playlist, and ends each post with the words "We Can Stop It." Joe says that when he began adding that coda about a year ago, the phrase referred to gun violence, "but it does apply to COVID-19 and about anything else that we have the ability to stop."
As I've written before, Facebook has been a lifeline for many of us in these new times, but I really appreciate Kevin and Joe for their years of steadfastness, so I just wanted to let them know. If someone in your life has made a difference for you during these tough times, or anytime, be sure to tell them.
It's the little things, people. Sometimes they're not so little.
I'll conclude this post with one of the tunes from Joe's May 1 morning shuffle. Take us out, Howard Jones ...
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