Passing Lane

My mother-in-law sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if I knew who Soupy Sales was. She had grown up watching him on TV and still remembers how to do "The Soupy Shuffle." I wrote back that my experience with Soupy was primarily through his guest appearances on various quiz shows and "The Love Boat." He didn't make the dent in my life the way that someone like Don Knotts did. Or Jim Carroll. Or John Belushi. Or Chuck Jones.
The list goes on and on. I make a list in my head, from time to time, of the people that I miss. That list gets longer as I grow older. It can also swell when I add in all those who I have lost touch with simply as a function of time and circumstance. It would not require a crystal ball or a seance to get in touch with them. That's what the Internet is all about. Google them. Look them up on Facebook. Hire a private investigator.
I can no longer make quick recollection of all the teachers who have come and gone since I started at my school twelve years ago. Then there's the list of teachers that taught me and their whereabouts. I still get a Christmas card every year from one of the guys I used to work with on the loading dock at Target. My family has set up a nice orderly camp in California that matches the home base in Colorado. I wonder how they guys I used to install steel furniture with have managed without me all these years. Not enough to seek them out, however.
But the big list begins and ends with the same guy. Darren became, over the years, synonymous with the void. That's too bad, since this was one guy who really did fill up a room. He was a presence, and the primary reason for us to all adopt the Hunter Thompson line, "He really stomped on the Terra." He left big footprints, and sometimes when I look out into a world without him, it makes me sad. Not for me anymore, but for the people who missed out on their chance to laugh until they cried in his spell. And those are the people I miss most. The ones who made me laugh.