It's easy to forget when we're head-down in the finances and the product that running a small business can often reach deep into the community. And it's easy to forget when you're used to serving the insular, niche market of tabletop gamers that there is a much bigger population out there pursuing mainstream interests.
I've noticed as my business bends further and further toward the mainstream that I capture an ever-broadening arrival population, and suddenly during these last few months, that population has started to include people I already knew, but lost track of long ago.
In some cases, it's old school friends. And they run the gamut. Guys and ladies alike, many are married and have families, while others are bachelors or spinsters, and not always the ones we might have guessed would be. Some of those who have kids had them way before I did, proportionately speaking. Others are just getting started, though that's the rarer outcome given that I am 44 years old and so are virtually all my old classmates, or near enough.
(By the way, I'm not too tough to spot in that photo. See if you can do it without cheating.)
I didn't lose track of all of them, of course.
One of my friends in that photo has been hanging out with me on the regular after more than 30 years. In fact, he's my secret weapon in business. Anything he tells me I should be paying attention to, I treat as a top priority dispatch.
Another of them moved out of state but I've been in touch, and in fact his father does our taxes. He and I ran years in scouting and enjoyed some of my best memories from high school, a time period I otherwise don't look back on all that fondly.
A third friend of mine from that photo, well, we were friends all through grade school and high school, but then I went to ASU and he went to UofA. I lost touch with him, but years later reunited in an unexpected way. My girlfriend, then fianceé, and now wife Stephanie... is his cousin. His parents are great aunt and great uncle to my kids. So we get to see each other at all the family events and once a year I get to remind him how much the Wildcats suck, or if my Sun Devils failed to get the job done, I get to take my lumps as he extols that fact. It's all in fun though and he's a good sport about it. His kids and my kids, second cousins all, are thick as thieves.
Those were three of the ones I never lost track of. And some of my friends from the years just before or after that time are still in touch with me on the regular anyhow, and always have been. Then there were those who I found again after all these years.
Not in that photo, but another friend from after this time period, from when I was just out of high school and working retail and scratching the surface of college. He found my Gilbert location last year and we got to reminisce about all the good times. He's still into the best video games and the best music, and he's still married to his sweetheart from way back then. They have a couple of daughters. Outstanding.
Another not from that photo because she went to one of the previous schools I attended, has been in touch on social media for a couple of years now and has a family. I'm happy for her because I've gotten to see some of their milestones in my feed, photos of her and the kids enjoying some school or sports activity, smiling for the camera. I love seeing people I care about enjoying their lives.
One of the girls in that photo popped up on one DSG social media link or another just last week, and I was like, oh wow. She was one of those who was so quiet and withdrawn back in 1988 that introverts were like, "wow, her? Yeah she keeps to herself." I don't do the Facebook stalking thing, but just from her name and profile photo I could tell she got married and had a couple of kids. I'm really happy for her.
There were a couple more across the gamut and I don't have a ton of detail to add; I limit how much I'll even look because like I said I don't want to be the creep, and it's already difficult for me to avoid seeming like that due to my autism. When in doubt, I keep my distance. But between hearing from them and sometimes having them walk right into the store, it has been a tremendous nostalgia trip. I guess it's a neat thing that I've got video games and Magic cards on display that, in some cases, hearken back decades to the last time they and I had heard from one another.
I'm really glad for how many of them are doing well. Generation X is outnumbered on both sides, by the boomers and the millennials, and combined they overwhelm us. We have fewer opportunities to get ahead because our predecessors are so many and aren't leaving their posts, and when we finally do, there are a horde snapping at our heels who want to take their turns sooner. We're a weary, cynical, disillusioned cohort, and yet we live freer than they do of the burdens of entitlement and social admonition. I don't know what history will say about us, but I sleep happy knowing how many of my friends and classmates represented us well.
There are the sad stories of course. A few of my old compadres are dead. One due to suicide. That was a sorrowful thing to learn. My heart went out to his family. Statistically speaking, every year more of my contemporaries will depart this mortal coil. After all, in 2024 most of us will be turning fifty. There are actuarial tables that deal with this. I'm certainly not going to be the last one standing, my health is making sure of that, but I'm going to hold on as long as I may.
Rush said it beautifully thirty years ago, and it's a perfect fit for today's article looking at life in the business that renews connections from beyond the business, in happiness and sadness (but mostly happiness). "Summer's going fast, nights growing colder. Children growing up, old friends growing older. Freeze this moment a little bit longer. Make each sensation a little bit stronger. Experience slips away. The innocence slips away."
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