Facebook strikes again! Another friend I had from the wild and carefree days of North Dakota contacted me. Thankfully, it wasn’t a poke but a request, which sounds more polite. Even better, this person from my past isn’t female…but if Jon were, I’m fortunate to have a wife who isn’t the irrational, jealous kind.
From 1985-86, Jon and I were part of a clique back in Beulah HS which included a couple other friends I lost touch with thanks to the distractions of college (beer, women and WMUR). Despite living in a frozen hell Dante never imagined, we had some memorable times. Jon even got me to take a more serious look at comic books through the DC Heroes roleplaying game and decent collection of New Teen Titans, New Mutants and X-Men (it was the Eighties, these books weren’t unbearable yet). Did I contribute anything good back? I’ll have to ask him because I am stumped and I was more of a taker then.
Much like Cindy, I did run into Jon during and after the Marquette Era but both times were complete surprises. Oddly, they were in Milwaukee too.
The first time was the evening of the Terence Trent D’Arby concert (March 1988). I was walking through the lobby of my dorm and there he was at the front desk. Since he was a high-school senior, Jon was traveling through parts of the Midwest to check out prospective schools. I doubt Marquette was a serious candidate but I was nearby so he dropped in. Jon certainly received a whirlwind tour of my life at the time plus a free ticket to the big TTD show. Then he headed back to Beulah to graduate and I doubt we communicated again.
Fast forward three years to GenCon 1991. I had been out of college for eight months, had an adequate-paying job with kinko’s as a typesetter, had been dating Carrie for over two years and I was at the ultimate nerd gathering in the known universe. LIfe was great. While talking to Phil, I spotted a familiar face from my peripheral vision and guessed correctly who it was. Seems Jon came down on a whim with his classmates from Grand Forks, ND (where the University of ND is). The convention was a four-day affair which gave us more time to catch up, gossip about other Beulahites and whatever. Encouraged by recent Maggi Picayune productivity, I promised to do a better job staying in contact via my “newsletter;” figuring I could recapture my past letter-writing levels from 1985. Sadly, GDW happened and most of you know the rest of that messy tale. (I also found his issue, converted from PageMaker 4 to InDesign 3, yuck, I don’t think I’d write back either.)
When Cindy and I started corresponding again, I had been thinking about Jon though. His name even came up in one of my searches through those services which will give you a phone number or address for a few bucks. Orginally I was looking for another person but I tried other names out of curiosity. Jon’s possible results seemed promising, the age and location seemed about right. I didn’t bother though, figuring he had forgotten me. How wonderfully wrong I was. It’s a good thing my name is rather obscure (there are other Steve Maggis in Facebook, heck the most “famous” one through Google’s search engine is a Right Wing jerk, probably my evil twin but fatter). Jon wrote me a pretty cool e-mail summarizing what has been going on after the long weekend in Milwaukee 1991.
Currently he’s in Germany studying for a semester abroad while completing law school. Maybe I can twist his arm into spending a couple days in Austin before he returns to his pseudo-home of Salem, OR. Meanwhile, I need to write him something more personal, the site is a tad general.
