Lost and Found

I was talking to a friend the other day who announced he found a classmate of ours through the internet. None of us had heard from this man since we were all still kids, although several people tried to find him.
We were part of a very small school, there were only sixteen in my senior class, you would think it would be easy to stay connected to that many people.
My friend said he looked up his name on some sort of information site and sure enough, he was right there. Turns out, he is a mayor of a small town. We were all hooligans back in the day. There were things our mayor friend did that made us chuckle at the thought of him sitting behind a desk, wearing a suit, making decisions for a town.
It's funny to me how we watch ourselves age in the mirror but the people we have lost touch with remain eighteen. I can't imagine some of my former classmates as grandparents. I had an equally hard time imagining some of them as parents. It would have been doubtful when we all graduated that any of us could keep a goldfish alive much less children! We were good kids, but the seventies were pretty much carefree for us.
Now, we have all recieved our AARP cards in the mail. Most of us are at least starting to feel more room in the nest (I am an exception because I keep adding little birdies to mine).
Thankfully, the internet has become the way to locate long lost friends. I have discovered several classmates I would have never found, without access to the social network I enjoy.
My friend said he called our fellow classmate with the number the website provided. He had to leave a message with a son. He has not heard back. This makes me wonder if some people just don't want to be found. I can't imagine having a gold mine of old friends seeking me out and not responding.
For now, our mayor friend remains a mystery. We don't know if he is happy and content with his life or if he really aspires to bigger things. Perhaps I will get a call from a reporter someday asking questions about a particular presidential candidate, someone I knew back in the day when we were eighteen. I'll have no choice but tell what I know...he was a hooligan, then he was gone.

Dumpster Diving

Ordinarily I try to keep a clean column. But this week I must warn, I'm talking trash.
Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I have rediscovered dumpster diving. I say "re" discovered because a few years ago my artist friend, Pam and I used to hit the VanNostran's cabinet shop dumpster after hours to dig out prime pieces of wood to paint on. And yes, on occasion we actually got IN the dumpster and pilfered through the sawdust.
Of late, I have been on another dumpster mission. Yellow Pepsi caps and Pepsi twelve pack boxes. These particular items are worth their weight in gold to BigHouse Foundation, the charity near and dear to my heart.
The Pepsi Company offers incredible grants to organizations willing to solicit votes online and through text messages from their supporters. BigHouse Foundation won a $25,000 grant in 2009 to buy equipment, start an afterschool program, pay for improvements to the building and otherwise help run the organization day to day.
This year BigHouse has applied for a $10,000 grant to provide packages for children in twenty Alabama counties who are new to foster care. These packages will provide emergency items: New pajamas, underwear, shoes, hygene items, school supplies, a toy and various other age appropriate needs. These packages are needed because more often than not children are brought into foster care with only the clothing they have on. It is common for a foster family to welcome a new child as an emergency placement and it is impossible to have everything a child needs in appropriate sizes at any given time. It is the desire of BigHouse and case workers as well as foster parents to make these children as comfortable as possible quickly. Having a care package to give them will help.
The way to win the grant is to collect the most votes on the Pepsi website.
It is free to vote but you can power vote by purchasing Pepsi products and looking for the code on the yellow caps and on the cardboard can packages.
My family bought numerous bottles of Pepsi this past weekend but could not be happy with our own collected codes. My daughter and son-in-law suggested we revisit my dumpster diving habit. We loaded the old Suburban and hit all the recycling bins in Lee County.
We drew the line at mixed trash, but found the recycling bins surprisingly clean. We collected a few yellow caps but hunted to no avail for crushed cardboard twelve pack boxes. We laughed about what we must have looked like to the few recyclers who actually came to drop something off.
I won't ask you to join us in dumpsters. But, I urge you to please buy Pepsi products this month and save your yellow caps for BigHouse. The contest is over at the end of the month. You can drop your caps off at BigHouse on Samford Ave in Opelika next door to the Onion Bookstore or at Integrity Auto Service on Geneva Street, or you can vote! This is a great way to support BigHouse directly. You can find all the information you need by going to www.ourbighouse.org or "friending" BigHouse on facebook. Thank you, Your help will keep this woman out of the trash.