Community post
Thanks for the Memories
I’ve been thinking a whole lot lately about how fast time passes. Except for a few very minor aches and pains I feel the same as I did when I was in my twenties—which I’m very grateful for. My spirit and body don’t feel middle-aged but that reflection staring back at me is starting to tell a different story.
My age really hits home when I sit back and think about the decades of experiences and friendships I have under my belt. People really do tend to come into your life for a season. When I was younger I took for granted that the people in my circle would stay there for the rest of my life. Sadly, few have, and I think it’s an unfortunate byproduct of our modern world.
We move. We hustle. We burn countless hours making our plans and scrolling. We get preoccupied. We focus on our careers. Sometimes throughout all that we forget to live. We forget to breathe. We get sidetracked and forget to appreciate those around us. We take for granted that this will all go on forever. The sad truth is there is a hard stop. Many of them actually.
There are many people from my past that I think about—when I do I think about them exactly as they were. These people exist in a kind of stasis, frozen in time. The last few years I’ve thought a lot about some of the people I’ve worked with in decades past. When I reminisce, an old friend I worked with at The Limited often comes to mind.
I met Scott months after I graduated high school when I started working for The Limited in Columbus in 1989. We worked together for a few years before I moved on to a different Limited division. We hung out after work. Went to happy hours, played pool, attended house parties, discussed life, hopes, dreams, women, music, politics.
Scott was a lot of fun, funny, and as you can tell from the photo below looked a whole lot like Howie Mandel—before he lost his hair. He was a character. We’d prank each other. I used to give him rides to and from work when his car broke down. We'd tell each other the worst jokes. Political Correctness hadn't quite been born yet. He’d often come to work hungover and would seek out hiding places in the distribution center to catch a short nap.
I was shocked to find I had a picture of Scott on my camera roll. I haven't a clue how I got that picture or who took it.
Scott was a man way before his time, very anti-tech, so it didn’t surprise me when I could never find him online. As a matter of fact I would have been shocked if did find any online footprint at all.
Just the other day I was talking with my Mom and we were reminiscing about some of the people we worked with (she worked at The Limited too) and Scott came up. On a whim I decided to look him up again and, this time, unfortunately I found his obituary.
I thought about how strange it was that when we worked together it felt like he was decades older than me. I was shocked to learn Scott was just five years older, but I guess that seems like ions when you’re still a teenager. I had just turned 18 when we met.
That was such a different time. Life was slower, in many ways more real. There were no cell phones. You could still smoke in public places. People didn't use the internet. We trusted the government, the media, institutions. We had most of our lives ahead of us but we didn't yet realize that. We were just living, day-to-day, trying to figure things out as we went along.
Just a few years after that photo was taken I moved to Minnesota and Scott and I lost touch forever. That's a weird thought. Such a hard-stop. The river of life and of time just kept on flowing and the distance became too vast.
I'd like to say this was a lesson for me but I doubt it. Life has a way of sweeping us away from those people we were once friends with. We all have the best of intentions...but. We evolve, we change, often in different directions. The chaos and crescendos of life happen. Sometimes the distance just becomes too vast. Most people really are with us for a season but we can still be grateful for the memories.
I've learned this is nothing to feel anger or guilt about. There's no one to blame. It's a part of life. It's taken me a long while to learn to make peace with this. It doesn't mean we appreciated those people any less, or they us. I feel like if anyone understood that it would have been Scott. Still I wonder what kind of life he ended up having. Hopefully he found some happiness and some peace along the way. In the end that's really all any of us can ask for isn't it? Rest easy, my friend, and thanks so much for the memories.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
Replies (16)
I had a guy I used to work with that I hadn't seen post on Facebook in a while, then suddenly, I did a little digging and found out he had passed away. So sad. It's not that I was close with him (obviously), but it was still sad. I always forget about your connection to Limited. I wonder how many people's memories of their time there are now tainted.
It's a strange feeling isn't it? Even if you weren't close friends. I worked there from 1989 until 1995. That seemed like an eternity back then. How it would just be a blip. As the Epstein story evolves it's looking like Les Wexner's role was more complicated than anyone originally thought. Part of that could be the lawyers' attempt to muddy the water. The Limited was a great place to work back then, the salary and the perks were almost unbelievable. There were several millionaires working in the distribution center when I started, some drove forklifts. Les' involvement with Epstein definitely tainted those memories. It's chilling to think how many times I stood just feet away from him.
Recently there have been rumors about ties between Epstein and a music camp in the the northern lower peninsula. It's pretty scary. It used to be an honor to be selected to attend there and now you almost are happy if you didn't go. I knew someone who worked for Bath and Body Works in the late 90's. The brand dominance was impressive for all of the companies under the main one.
That doesn't surprise me. His network cast a wide net. Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret sounded like they were turned into grooming factories—the former for men, the latter for women to be trafficked. The employees of The Limited who really reaped the benefits were those who started in the early 1980's. They used to give employees company stock for milestones and performance-related bonuses. That stock exploded throughout the 80's and early 90's and made a lot of ordinary people very wealthy. I missed that train by a decade.
Figures right! Always just a bit too late to the party!
I definitely was that time! It was a close call.
Congratulations @ericvancewalton! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 83000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPA very thought provoking post... Because I work in local government a lot of my coworkers are older so a few have passed away and it is a weird feeling... One day people are just not there...
That's always sad when someone doesn't even make it to retirement. I remember how the thought of "the golden years" of retirement would get me through some of those stressful weeks when I worked corporate. Scott's obit was pretty light on details but I was happy to hear my old friend settled down, got married, and had a couple of children.
I didn't see this post until now, 2 days later, but it resonated with me - I could have written this. It's the story of my life. I had dozens of friends at my wedding, some in the wedding party, I don't even talk to anymore and haven't seen in years. I felt I was thoughtless but you're probably right, life moves on. But as you age and your social circle shrinks you realize how much you've lost. I recently reconnected with one colleague but the process is slow because we no longer work side by side. This was a thoughtful, honest reflection on life and I was touched by reading it.
Thanks John. I would suspect it's pretty common for people entering the late-summer/early autumn of their years to feel this way. For me, at 55, I feel like I've lived several lifetimes already when I think about it. I've carried some lingering guilt or anger about the "hard-stops" in friendships over the years but I've learned to make peace with it. For me, most friendships have to be fed with new shared-experiences to keep them going. Except for very rare cases the friendship withers if there is any kind of distance or long breaks in making those new experiences. I think this is why the pandemic wrecked so many peoples' social lives. My wife and I talk frequently about how few friends we have as a couple and how there's only a small portion of those few we can count on—only two or three. It's exhausting to try to make plans with anyone because most are so wishy-washy and often cancel or are "booked out" for weeks. We used to go out with large groups of friends before 2020 and plans were spontaneous and there was rarely a shortage of things to do. We're in the process of making some new friends now and it's been great to connect with new people and make new memories.
So very sorry about Scott. Too young, way too young.
I think everybody who reads this post will relate. We all sort of let things go, let people go. It's not intentional. Life gets in the way. That doesn't change the value of when we knew those people.
The sense of time passing is acute for me now, which is sort of what you are saying here. Nostalgia not only for the past, but for the present as I live it.
One of the most significant works I ever read was written by Miguel de Unamumo. In Spanish it is, El Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida. In English it is The Tragic Sense of Life. I think that title and that essay capture the essence of what we feel as time passes inexorably, every moment, every day.
Thank you! Yes, 57 is very young these days. I carried around guilt for years about letting some of these friendships drift. It wasn't continuously lingering guilt but it occasionally reared its head when I thought of old friends. I've realized these last few years that it's no one's fault. Thanks for mentioning the essay. I'll seek that out and have a read!
I ordered the book. : )
Oh, wow. I read that my first year in college. I found it so very moving. He has had an effect on some of the most important writers in the Spanish language and also on writers world wide. He certainly left his mark on me.
I'm looking forward to reading it! I have no idea how this one escaped me all these years.