I don't know what happened to one of my childhood best friends. I think about all of them fairly frequently, but we've all lost touch that only time can create. I wonder where they are today after all is said and done. Most of us didn't share the same path, Sports, Academics, Arts or just general apathy to anyting conventional tore us all apart. Where has all of this time gone?

I wonder if they think of me in the still dark and think that things might have been different if... Just like I do. I wonder if they disappeared from my view because of circumstance or desire. At one point I was the KING of tag on the playground; sort of a mafia-inspired godfather of the game. I held court every recess and no game of Tag went unsanctioned without my firm hand governing it. ALL of the kids would ask me if they could play and I would sort them into the appropriate game based on their ability to compete. Can't let them into the main game unless they could hang. They would just be swallowed up by the quick and speed merchants. That would crush them before they understood the subtleties of the game.

Come Middle School, everything changed. Cliques emerged and societal boundaries began to form. Recess ceased, and we all became islands of small populations knowing that the rest existed, but clinging to our barrier reefs for acknowledgement, acceptance and sustenance. When did I become an individual, if not on the isle of the blind when I alone could see? If nothing else, my own path for certain.

Later in High School all links were adrift in the sea and new paths emerged, but I stood fast since I had certainty on my side. Where were the old ties from years past? Where were the old ways and the people that I had held close as friends? I would still catch glimpses, but the past still seemed so far away that they appeared alien and forgotten already. Where have all my old friends gone? The ones that I used to drink and make merry with on those deserted nights when nothing but the still night remained. I've since been to the bars back home, but rarely I see a face that seems familiar. The ones that look like the boys and girls on that playground still look vacant and lost from my mind. Like, "Ya, so what?" Weren't we all cut of the same cloth?

Where has time gotten us? I'm still who I was those many years ago, just grown more steadfast in that path that I chose so long ago. I'm living exactly how I had envisioned myself since I was 12. I wonder how they saw themselves, and whether they're living that life; or if they wanted that life at all, but now they're stuck with various circumstances that now haunt them. I wonder if they're happy. I wonder if they now play Poker, and that has brought them here. Maybe they read here and feel contempt at me for what I can and can't control. I've apologized to those that I've wronged in the past, whether they thought so or not, I thought so. This is me, for better or worse, I make no apologies.

They feel like ghosts in the night now. Know that I do think about you and I miss you all in your unique way; each and every one of you. I guess that I really miss myself and the simplicity of it all.

Tag, you're it.

Nicholas has left the 3s