Almost Thirty Years Later

One item I have found among my treasured papers is a small, standard issue thank you card from a young visitor who was in a touring boys choir and spent two nights in our home back in 1981. A black and white photograph of the group of about forty handsome choirboys each dressed in a long sleeved, white shirt with ruffled neck, vest, and long pants is on the front of the card. A well defined circle has been drawn around the taller, dark haired boy on one end and Georg is signed below. Inside, under some Dutch Afrikaans words, is his name confidently printed in capital letters, easy to read. In the small community the world has become, I decided to look him up on line, as I love to know how people's lives have been. He was easy to find. There were only a couple of men with the same name, but the dead giveaway was the photograph of one, an older but still handsome version of the boy in the picture. I decided to contact him and used facebook since I saw him on there, also. I wrote the obvious, that I had found the card and how he had stayed with us. I said how my sons had enjoyed their stay (another nice boy was with him) and how impressed we were that he could solve the Rubik's cube in less than a minute. This morning I got a response from him. He is now a global businessman who lives in the UK, has three daughters, and as a matter of fact was showing them the Rubik's cube that morning. He still has his diary from the trip and remembered staying with us. I think he was glad to have heard from me, to have had that memory jogged, and I was glad to hear how he "turned out" as they say. Not there there would be any doubt.