The things you learn

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A long time ago, my former roommate and I went to this party. Honestly, it wasn't my kind of party, even though the guy holding it was in the SF community - that "Science Fiction" for those of you who don't know me well. I was kind of following my then roommate around waiting for an appropriate time to cut this party off and go home. They were drinking and smoking and smoking funny stuff and all that kind of "party" stuff... And then I stopped. Because, sitting there, smoking one of those funny ones, was one of my vets. I broke off from following and went over and said "Hi." Now, I didn't expect him to remember my name, after all, he had lots of clients and I only had 2 vets (at the time, I later added another one.) But he knew I was one of those clients. He offers me the funny cigarette. I say - "No, I don't smoke." And that was that. The roommate and I continued to see the guy who was hosting the party for a while and then lost touch and I continued to go to the vet. We never talked about the cigarette, but he soon learned that I really don't smoke - anything, funny or otherwise. So, there I was, on Facebook and I get to thinking about the guy, why I don't know. I haven't seen him in a good 25+ years, but I do. So, because I really didn't remember his name well, but I remembered something else about him, I managed to rediscover his name and, lo and behold, connect with him on Facebook. However, my vets are about as low tech as you can get. They had to break down and get a fax machine, which meant they had to get a phone with push buttons, but, except for the one phone, the rest of them still have dials. I know! I mentioned to the vets that I reconnected with this guy, they all know him, of course, you kind of learn each others friends when you work with someone for 40+ years... So, I saw this guy had broken down on the highway, managed to get home and PMed him that the vet had retired. And we chatted some. He hasn't seen the vet since 2003ish, but told me that the guy who used to work with him had gotten bad into drugs and was in prison now. Some how, that just doesn't surprise me...